


Blow, Northerne Wynd

by heathtrash



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Amnesia, Confinement, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fluff and Angst, Middle Ages, Rapunzel Elements, implied season 3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathtrash/pseuds/heathtrash
Summary: A young girl, cursed by a witch to be a danger to those around her, lives in a solitary tower where she has lived alone for over a decade but for her foster mother, who visits to bring her supplies and medicine. Over the years she gradually forgot the life she led before, but still she longs for adventure to blow her way on the wind. Little does she know, she is about to meet a fair knight who will change her life forever.Or, that Rapunzel AU hicsqueak fic literally no one asked for.
Relationships: Hardbroom/Pentangle (Worst Witch)
Comments: 53
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

When she was a mere sapling of a girl, Joy lived for dancing. Every evening when she would go about the last of her daily chores, she would spin as she went, her long plaits of dark hair whirling about her, and her pale face flushed with exhilaration. Everyone thought her queer—for there was work to be done—yet still while others toiled and shook their heads at her, she spun around, delighting in the feeling of all the world rushing around her head, rejoicing in the simple act of living and working.

Yet now, she leant upon the stony window sill, her hair heavy and hanging out of the window to fall some thirty yards below, and looked out across the mist-draped land below her tower as her plaits drifted on the breeze. Joy remembered nothing of the youth she once had, nor of spinning around until she was so dizzy that she dropped her basket of apples and sent them rolling all over the path—and so the childhood that she had loved and lost was no weight on her mind.

All that she knew was what she had been told by her foster mother—that it had all started when her birth mother had longed for a herb that had grown in a garden that did not belong to her. To take herbs from the garden of a witch was a risk most would not chance, for to the witch, they were ingredients for her spells and hexes. Her mother’s peculiar craving had increased—the more she ate of the herb, the more she needed it—and she would eat nothing else. She sent her husband to pick more of the forbidden herb, and he obliged, since she was with child and he would have brought her the moon if she had asked for it. The witch, however, discovered him stealing from her one day, and decided that the woman and her husband could not go unpunished.

The witch visited her while she was still with child and told her that one day, her child would fall ill—whether that would be when she was seven years or seventy, only time would tell—but that she would become a danger to all those around her, and that she would be the downfall of the whole village. The woman wept and wept, for she would have suffered a hundred curses to spare her baby just one, but the witch would not heed her sorrow.

Months passed, and the woman gave birth to Joy, whom she named as a symbol of all that she would lose if the curse took hold, and out of her dearest hope that the ill fate would never come to pass. Joy seemed to grow to be a fine young girl—healthy and content with her life as a farmhand’s daughter, taking delight in the simplest of joys. All seemed well for many a year.

Yet upon Joy’s twelfth birthday, she developed a terrible sickness, as the curse had foretold. Mother Broomhead, who had been a kindly woman in the village with no partner nor child of her own, had been so charitable as to take the child herself, even risking the danger to herself. Mother Broomhead had travelled with Joy far away to this solitary tower, where there was no door to let her out, nor opening of any kind but the single window that looked out across the land. The tower was so tall and without crack or fault, that one would slip and fall to an early grave before climbing down. Treacherous and lonely though it seemed, a life of exile was her only option.

Every few days, Mother Broomhead would come to the foot of the tower and call up to her to let down her hair. Joy would always do so, for she relied upon the supplies that her mother brought her—and particularly the special draught of tea, which she said stopped the curse from taking her over, though she was still too sick to leave the tower. Joy drank it dutifully—and though it made her dull afterwards, she knew that it was for her own ease and comfort. The fire would fade from her heart, and the colours about her seemed greyer and less appealing, and she felt more docile and satisfied with her life in the tower. Thus had she survived for nine winters, having to be satisfied with staving off her sickness, and never to have any hope of release.

When Joy was younger, she had wondered about the outside world and the charms it could hold for her. Even though she herself could never leave her tall tower, Joy could see for many miles around from her bower window. Sometimes she would see the plumes of dust from horses riding across the plains beyond the forests. She once asked Mother Broomhead why they would not come, and what kept them away, and if she would ever meet a handsome knight like one that she could dimly remember from a tale she must have been told in her life before her sickness.

But Mother Broomhead had put a stop to those thoughts—for though it pained her to say such things, of course, she had to remind Joy that she was dangerous, and that she had to hide away for everyone’s safety. And that safety included Joy’s own—for there were people—wicked, power-hungry people—who would try to capture her and turn her into a weapon against their enemies, even despite the risk to themselves. People were unpredictable and irrational, and could not be trusted—that was a lesson drilled into her early on. The only person she could trust was her mother.

Joy had long since laid to rest her days of imagining what lay beyond the horizon and the life she could have lived, or reminiscing on her childhood. Joy had heard the tale of her early life many times, for in her youth she had begged and begged Mother Broomhead to tell it to her over and over, wondering whose were the eyes and hands that she had inherited, longing to know to whom she truly belonged. It upset Mother Broomhead to keep telling her, though, so as she grew in age and understanding, she stopped asking questions and learnt to accept the answers she had.

Even though Joy had lost her birth mother and father, Mother Broomhead was a constant and loving presence whom it pleased her to call mother. For Mother Broomhead had often said that she could bear no child of her own, and that taking care of Joy had been the greatest gift a lonely woman could have asked for.

The tower was safe, the tower was home—she had many things to love within it, and was happy with all that she had. She was not poor, and wanted for nothing. She had grown accustomed to the wind that would blow unhindered through the open window, bringing with it the smell of the forest and trees among which she could never walk. She was old friends too, with the darkness, and with climbing the steep wooden steps with a candle, bearing light down to the levels of the tower where there was none. There was comfort to be had in the darkness that she had for most of the day, for the daylight from the upper window would not reach far, and would be gone once the sun had tracked its course across the sky beyond the sight of her window. The darkness would wrap about her, the only constant friend that she could call her own. It was there that she could pretend that this was all there was.

* * *

Joy was sat in her straight-backed wooden chair, gazing into the bright heart of the candle glowing in the dim light of her bower, and in her idleness, played her fingers across the flame. She was not meant to touch the fire—for while another person might scald their fingers, for Joy, it posed a much greater hazard. It was a symptom of her sickness, she supposed, that the fire would bend to her touch. On days where her feelings were too strong to contain within herself, the flame might leap from the wick to her sleeve, and consume everything if left unchecked. It was at these times that she knew that Mother Broomhead would be ere long due to return to see her, to give her the draught that would help to dull the strange sickness within her. She knew she ought not to cause the tongue of fire to dance about, but it gave her an odd—perhaps slightly wicked—pleasure to be able to see what the curse allowed her to do.

Mother Broomhead tended to visit her in the mornings and leave before nightfall, and today seemed like such a day when she would do so. It was always disconcerting not knowing exactly when her mother would arrive, nor in what kind of mood she would arrive in. At times, she was kind enough—but at others she could be impatient and sharp. Joy knew her mother had her best interests at heart, but all the same, her mornings would be plagued with a lingering unease.

Joy cast her eyes to the open window, through which a brisk northern wind was blowing. It was not yet full light, and against the hazy purple dawn, the ghostly afterimage of the candle tingled in a coloured patch. Her day would soon be full of her mother, who tended to dominate everything in her line of sight—and everything out of it, too. Sighing to herself, she crossed the room and leaned on the window sill, looking down at the forest below. She was used to the dizzying height of the tower, and the blades of grass and wildflowers that she strained to see upon the ground below—though as the moon waxed and waned she longed to know what it was like to feel grass under her feet—but Joy shook the thought from her head. She did not need to reminisce on such things that were not important. She ought to be grateful for all that her mother had done for her, and not dream for things that could never be.

As she was turning from the view out, a movement in the twilight caught her eye at the treeline. It was quite possibly just a skittish deer dashing back into the safety of the woods, but for a moment, she had thought it was a horse. Joy turned away, denying that her heart quickened at the thought of some excitement happening outside her window. There was no sense in such silly thoughts. Mother Broomhead would never have allowed it.

As if on cue, Mother Broomhead’s voice cried up from far below the window. “Joy! Joy! Let down thy long hair, that I might climb up to see my only daughter.”

Joy returned to the window with vigour and looked out below to see the dark cloak shrouding her mother’s form below. She gathered the braids of her hair to her, letting them thud against the wooden floor like enormous lumpy ropes, thick even towards the ends.

A hook driven into the dense stone above her window served for an anchor for her hair so that it would not pull at her head when her mother would climb up. Joy bundled her long plaits into her arms and released them over the edge—they bounced as the full length dropped into the free air, swaying with the breeze. She lifted the thick plaits from the stone sill and secured them over the hook, took a firm hold of the slack, and called down to the base of the tower. “Welcome home, Mother!”

The small figure of her mother grasped the dangling lengths and arranged them underneath herself in a harness after Joy hung the plaits through the hook. Hoisting her up should have been tiring work, but miraculously she always managed it quite easily—on her mother’s journey up, at the very least. Letting her down at the end of the day usually left her exhausted, as though all her strength had been sapped. She supposed it was an effect of the draught.

Her mother’s face grew closer and closer as she pulled her up, hand over hand, the plaited hair soft as silken rope under her fingers, and eventually, Joy could reach out and help her through the window. Her mother cast her eyes over Joy, while unfastening the penannular brooch that held her grey travelling cloak in place from her breast.

“My dear sweet Joy, the only joy of my life.” Her mother kissed her cheek, shaking the cloak out and draping it over a chair to dry. “How much have you made for me this time?”

Joy had all the time to spare in the world, so while her mother was absent, she would bake bread or set herself to work, sewing clothing or weaving. Mother Broomhead would give all the clothing and the bread that they did not need to the poor and destitute. It brought Joy no pain to knead and knead and knead when she knew that she was bringing nourishment to the poor, nor did the needle pricking her finger cause her to cry out, for the thought of them hungry and cold and relying on her spurred her on when she was felt tired.

“No fewer than thirty loaves, Mother. They are wrapped up on the side and ready to take with you. I have also completed a belt and a kirtle, if you will permit me to put the finishing touches to it.”

“Only one kirtle? It will have to do, my child.” Mother Broomhead always called her child, even though she was now one-and-twenty years of age. “Now, let me prepare some tea for you.”

Yet she was indeed still a child, and would be her entire life, as she watched her mother set herbs in a pot to boil over the fire. Joy did not know exactly when it was that she would become an adult, nor what that would involve. She would bake bread, sew and embroider clothing, or tablet weave throughout the day. When she thought of her future, it was hazy and indistinct.

She was not encouraged to spend time embroidering or otherwise decorating her own clothing—Mother Broomhead had told her it was vain to adorn herself, especially when she was no great beauty. Mother Broomhead was not being unkind when she had spoke to her so. She merely meant to tell the truth to Joy, and to keep her living a humble and modest life. Even though Joy was never to see a soul but she, it brought her pleasure to see her only daughter virtuous and pure of heart.

Joy slipped her finger into her well-used thimble and hastened to finish the hem of the kirtle she had been sewing, while her mother washed herself in the well in the lowest level of the tower. It was common for her to have made a few garments in the time her mother had been away, for she would have time while the bread loaves were baking in batches to take up her needle and thread and pass the time productively in that manner. As soon as she had fashioned each chemise, hose, cotte, kirtle, bliaut, or woven trim or belt, they would be whisked away by her mother, who told her what fine garments they would make for the misfortunate souls who could not afford clothes of their own.

Joy had always thought it sad that she should never see the fruits of her own labours, and had secretly kept back one woollen cloak that she had been embroidering for five years and a day. It was a tapestry of wonderment, and her deepest shame—covered all over in the finest threads of every colour and glittering with silver and gold, depicting creatures of myth and a bold knight who fought them against skies painted in the daintiest of twisted strands, with patterns woven about them—stories that she had a sense of, but could put no names or narratives to. She had almost finished it, save for the head of the knight—the only blank space on the wool where her needle had not touched, less than the size of her palm. 

Yet Joy could not picture a face noble enough to suit the knight. Truth be told, she could not call to mind any face other than her own or Mother Broomhead’s in enough detail to reproduce, and neither would work for her purposes. It was for the best that she had reached a point where she had had to stop working on it—for this way, she could keep the dream of one day finishing it alive in the back of her mind.

* * *

It was a dark, chilly morning that Joy woke up to, with the northerly wind once more blowing in through the window. Summertide would soon be over. Her mother had left the evening before, taking with her the loaves of bread that she had baked, and the kirtle she had sewn, and the woven belt into which she had poured her past few weeks at her loom. She yearned to see the journeys those clothes would take—what kind of person would wear them, and whether they would wonder about the person who had painstakingly made them, stitch by stitch. She always imagined someone like herself, but younger and wanting for a well-made garment—the tears would pool in her grateful eyes as she accepted her first piece of fine clothing to wear from the kindly Mother Broomhead. She would put it on, and be renewed in her energy to care for her family—while a brood of young children no taller than her knee would tug at the hem of her kirtle.

Joy shivered as she lit the candles in the kitchen. Secretly, there were aspects of her solitary living that appealed to her. She could never imagine herself already married to a faceless man and having his faceless children. She much preferred the work she already had—it made sense, and even if she was trapped in an endless cycle of labour and loss once her endeavours were all taken away, at least she had something of a choice in the matter of what she made.

She never lacked for materials or ingredients, for her mother would bring bolts of linen or wool, or occasionally, silk, and sacks of fine-milled grain each week for her to make as much as she could. When she was younger, it was clapbread or tourte that she would bake—lesser quality bread made from barley and husk—but the quality of the flour Mother Broomhead brought to her had increased over the years, and now she was able to produce fine wastel bread. Even if Joy could read, she would never have need of a recipe, for she knew it in her heart, and in her hands she could feel when there was enough water in the dough. She kneaded the mass of dough on the table, flouring the surface to keep it from sticking, and when it was well kneaded, set the dough under a cloth to rise while she went to her chamber to her embroidery.

She sang a tune she could put no name to as she worked the needle in and out of the fabric, and let the wind and rising sun play across her face as she did. When her mother was not there, she could sing out as loud as she pleased—for even though her mother discouraged it, it passed the long hours faster. She began to lose herself to the song and the rhythm of the embroidery, when all of a sudden she heard a cry from outside, faint, but distinct. “Joy! Joy!”

Joy stopped singing in an instant, and her breath caught in her throat, for she had precious little to give her mother in way of contributions to the villages. She thought it bizarre that her mother had returned so quickly from her journey, yet it was not unprecedented that she should come back after only a day. Sometimes if the weather was foul enough, or if she had left something behind that she found she had need of, she would perchance double back. 

“Joy! Joy! Let down thy long hair, that I might climb up to see my only daughter.”

Joy did as she was asked. She peered over the edge to see—worrying for a moment that her mother might be hurt—but the base of the tower was too dark to see, for the tower was so tall that the morning sunrise would hit the top long before it would reach the bottom. Sunrise was be the only time she would have much natural light, for her window faced east. It had been many years beyond her recall since she had seen a sunset.

She pulled her mother up, just as she did usually. Perhaps it was because she had recently been kneading dough, but her arms felt weaker, or her load heavier than usual. Her mother might have brought back with her some sack of produce—that must be it.

The figure that climbed through her window, however, was not her mother. Instead of a small, frail body, an arm covered in dazzling rings all linked together, reached up, a fistful of Joy’s hair wound around the hand—then came into view a head of golden hair, a fall of a rich red cloak tumbling over a shoulder, and a surcoat of the same hue, emblazoned with the outline of a five-pointed star, the lines weaving over and under each other in an unending knot, covered the body. A great boot swung up over through the window, and into Joy’s bed chamber.

The shock must have been evident on her complexion, for she felt her blood drain out of it, and felt she might faint at the sight of so queer a sight. It was a knight, who seemed to have leapt right from a fantastical fable and in through the window of her bower. Upon their hip, from a knotted leather belt, was a sword in a scabbard of carved wood and leather. Fear struck through her, and she scrambled backwards, stumbling into the table by the chair where she had been sitting. Immediately she reached behind her, seized the sharp shears with which she cut fabric from the table, and held them out before her, shaking. “Stay back—you must not come any closer!”

But rather than the fear that Joy had expected, the knight had only an expression of curiosity. They put up their small, fine hands, that emerged from an opening in the palm of their mail mittens that folded back from the wrist, in a position of surrender. “I will keep my distance, but pray, tell me—what is this place? Why do you live in a tower with no entrance?”

Ignoring the knight’s questions, Joy hesitated, before asking, “Are you— a man?”

A smile of amusement crossed the knight’s face. “Do I look to you like a man?”

Joy looked carefully at the knight, whose eyes were alight with the first light of day filtering in through the window, and were golden brown as the tumbling autumnal leaf, and whose cropped hair just brushing their cheek shone like gold spun into fine thread. “I— do not know,” Joy returned, faltering in her frustration. “I know only my own face and that of my mother.”

The knight frowned, but replied, “Then you must know the fairest face in all the land.”

The shears in Joy’s hand lowered slightly as she puzzled over the knight’s words. “My— mother? Do you know of her?”

“I know only the one before whom I stand.”

It dawned upon Joy that the knight had meant it was _she_ who was the fairest face in all the land—yet how could that be? Her mother had always put her in the belief that she was no delight to look upon. The knight must be deceiving her. She regained a firm grasp on the shears, holding them aloft as she might a sword—and though she tried to embolden herself, her voice shook in her throat as she declared, “If you are a man, I must tell you your compliment falls on deaf ears. We can never be married, because of my sickness, and must send you away from here at once—I only hope that it is not too late for you.”

The knight gave a strange smile. “Then it is good for me that I am a woman.”

Joy scowled. The knight was playing tricks with her words and making a mockery of her. She remembered what she had always been taught— _people were unpredictable and irrational, and cannot be trusted._ “I must still beg that you leave me in peace, for your own safety.”

The knight took a step back, but kept her eyes trained on Joy. “I give my word that I will leave, if you would indulge my curiosity and answer but a few questions?”

Joy considered this prospect. This seemed to be the only way she could be rid of the strange knight. She was frightened that the knight was risking her life, as she most likely did so on the field of battle—but that she was also not aware of the full danger of being around Joy, even though she was but a maiden in a tower. Although Joy did not know exactly what it was that made her such a danger, she knew that it came from within her, and that any lit candles held the potential for disaster.

“Wait here a moment,” Joy mumbled. “Please do not touch anything.”

She left her plaits trailing on the floor—for still they wandered all over the room where she had left them when the knight had made her entry—and descended the steep wooden steps from her chamber to the lower levels. She blew out every single candle that she could find that was lit, and doused the oven fire in the kitchen, until she had plunged each room into darkness, and only a sliver of light could be seen from the very top of the steps. She returned to her bedchamber, where the knight stood over her discarded embroidery, and she put out the remaining flame. A trail of smoke swirled in the air, languishing heady and fragrant between them.

“Now, you may proceed. You may ask five questions, and then I will speak no more today.”

Even without the candle, it was still bright enough to see with the light of morning spilling through the window. Joy realised as the sun glowed through the red wool cloak that she held some curiosity for what the knight might ask of her—for it was not often that knights tumbled through the window of her bower—but her rationality overwhelmed that feeling.

The knight narrowed her eyes in confusion. “Why did you blow out the candle?”

“In case the flame should jump.” Joy would only give brief answers. She did not think her mother would approve of her revealing any of her secrets, but expected that the knight would quickly run out of questions if she asked for clarification.

“But why should it jump? The wind, though strong today, would blow it would before it could catch.”

Joy gave a long stare at the knight. She still did not know if she could trust her, but she did not think a lie would be as effectively off-putting as the truth. “It is part of my sickness.”

The knight shook her head, as if puzzled. “Yet how does your sickness affect you? And how did you fall ill?”

Joy marked off two more questions in her mind. “I have never discovered the full extent of it, but I was cursed in my mother’s womb by a witch, for her theft of things that did not belong to her.”

“And that is why you hide away in this tower?”

“It is.”

The knight nodded gravely, seeming to understand. She glanced about the floor, where Joy’s hair lay, undisturbed, trailing every which way. “Your hair—it is beautiful. But how did it grow so long?”

Joy’s face hardened, and she turned her face away from the knight. She did not want to see her disappointment, even if it came at the expense of her own defence. “That is all I will answer. You have had your five questions, and must go as you promised.”

“Oh— but I— you did not answer how your sickness affects you.”

Joy felt a great sadness well up inside her as she shook her head. Ere long the knight would be gone, and she would be on her own once more, with nothing but the oven for company. “As I said—I do not know. My mother keeps the worst of it suppressed with a special draught that she brews. All I know is that fire can move when I put my hand to it, or else when my humour changes.”

Her tongue would say no more on that matter. She had already told too much of herself, and she feared saying anything more. The knight had hardly proved herself harmless, and Joy had not forgotten the sword that was sheathed by her side. If she had thoughts on what Joy had said, she did not show them on her face—she only looked thoughtful. 

Joy tightened her grip around the shears in her hand. She had a grievance she wished to articulate before the knight left. “You deceived me into letting you up by posing as my mother.”

The knight’s eyes flitted downwards in shame. “I must humbly apologise, my lady. I was curious about the tower. I thought it was an abandoned watchtower, though I had heard the rumours that a witch lived here.”

Joy said nothing in response. The speculation of strangers—that the person who lived in the tower, that _she_ , was a witch—terrified her. She knew not what they might do, and hoped that such a reputation would not call forth any more unsolicited visitors.

The knight continued, “I had been taking my rest by the river on my journey towards the tower, when I noticed an old woman on the path. She did not notice me, so I followed her to see whether she was indeed the witch that the tales spoke of. I listened to the words she spoke at the foot of the tower, and was amazed to see two great lengths of hair being let down, thicker than any ropes I have seen. I waited until she left, as the sun began to set. I spent the night in the wood, dreaming wild dreams of the tower, and I knew I had to return. I confess when I heard your singing in the morning, I had to know the face of the one who sang them, and who possessed such uncommonly long hair. I called up as the old woman did, and the rest you know.”

Joy shivered. Her safety—her entire world—had been infiltrated so easily by the simplest of deceits. Looking down at her hands, she was still uncertain whether she could make the knight leave. The shears she held were but an idle threat—the knight, who must be trained in the art of war and had cut down many men on the battlefield, could knock them from her hand as casually as she might toss her golden hair from her eyes.

The knight’s soft voice intruded upon her thoughts. “You have lived here alone for many years.”

It was an impertinent comment, but Joy turned back to look upon the knight, only to see that she was facing towards the window. The back of her head looked so defenceless, while slung over her shoulders was a shield painted with an heraldic symbol—the same five-pointed star picked out in gold. 

“The number matters not,” Joy said, her voice coming out unwillingly from her throat.

With a sigh and a rustle of her ring mail, the knight laid her hands upon the stone bricks of the window. “I have troubled you enough, my lady. I beg that you let down your hair so I might take my leave.”

Joy nodded. “It is for the best,” she said in agreement, unconvinced that she believed a word of what she said. She put the shears back upon the table, relieved that she had not had to follow through with that line of threat.

The knight watched in silence as Joy went about the room to gather up all of her hair, before casting the ends of her hair out of the window in a loop over the hook. Standing by her at the window was the closest she had been to the knight, and she could smell woodsmoke and pine on her cloak. 

Joy felt oddly helpless as the knight took the ends of her plaits to wind about each of her hands, and mounted her foot upon the stone window. None other than her mother had touched her hair and used it to enter her impenetrable tower, until that day. She sighed, supposing that it would do no good to dwell on it now that the knight had already changed that. Joy linked her fingers into the two braids hanging from the hook, and braced herself for the effort of letting the knight down, the bundle of hair at her feet waiting to be fed down. The knight checked to make sure Joy was ready, before beginning her descent. The ropes of hair became taut with the weight of the knight, at once burning in her arms.

“Wait—you know my name—but may I know of yours?” Joy blurted out, as the knight’s feet dug into outer wall below her window.

“Pippa, of the Pentangle Order,” she called up, shaking her hair aside to look up at Joy.

Joy knew she would never see that fair, bright face again, and tried to commit it to memory before she left forevermore. “Then farewell, Pippa of the Pentangle Order.”

Joy let the braids through her hands slowly, knowing that with each foot of her hair she let down, the knight—Pippa—was passing further and further from her. It was right, it was _right_ , that she should be leaving Joy to her own company. Joy reproached herself for her doubts, and for her weakness—hearing the words in her mind as if they were spoken by her mother.

The hair in her hands soon grew slack. Joy looked down to see the knight flee to the treeline, into which she disappeared for a moment, before bringing forth a white palfrey—Joy realised she had not been mistaken the previous morning when she had thought she had seen a horse—for it had been Pippa’s horse. She was brought back to the present when she saw the knight mount her horse, in a fluid, confident motion. The knotted star device on her shield, slung over her back, glinted as she rode away.

Joy shook herself, and descended to the kitchen to attend her bread dough—back to the simplicity of flour and water—back to her reality. The dome of the clay oven was cool to the touch, so she put some fresh brushwood into it, and lit it with a flint and steel, keen to not let the dough rise too much and spoil. It would take a while for it to come to a hot enough temperature, since earlier she had doused its lively flames before it could reach a heat that would bake bread. The last thing she needed now was for her bread to fail. That was the one thing she could always rely upon.

But try as she might to think of the baking of bread, her mind was still clouded over, heedless of her efforts to banish all thoughts of the knight’s coat of metal rings—her strange crop of hair—the arms she bore, though her face was fair. Indeed, her face was the most handsome she could remember—admittedly she knew very few faces—but now her mind was full of only this Pippa of the Pentangle Order. There was something about the woman in armour that was different, but she could put no words to the feeling. All that she knew was that her world had been shattered by this woman. Yet, the wind would never blow her back this way again—and she would be far gone by now upon her steed of white, her cloak billowing about her, red as the sunrise, as she went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the product of a lot of research, which i will post when the fic is completed!! in case you wondered, the setting is 12th century Britain. i have held onto this concept since last december and started writing it properly back in may before other more pressing projects took precedent.
> 
> the title was super hard to come up with but after going through about a million concepts, i settled on this - from a Middle English song of the same name.
> 
> this fic should update regularly (weekly-ish) since i've already written most of it!
> 
> please let me know if you enjoyed this and let me know what you think in the comments!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The return of her visitor puts Joy in quite the predicament as she battles with her promise to her mother to remain isolated.

Upon the next morn, Joy looked out onto a warm sky as it began to touch upon each green leaf of the forest canopy far below that shivered after the night’s long rest. There was a distinctive chill in the morning air that whipped through the window that caused her nose to ache slightly, just as the dull familiar ache of yesterday’s toil made her limbs feel heavy. She could feel ever more that Summertide was approaching its last days—even though the years blended together, she knew and felt the passing of the seasons keenly. With the window her only source of daylight, she would often spend hours gazing out at the world in which she wished she could partake—tiny buds blossoming, pink forests turning emerald, and then a whirl of ruby and gold leaves upon the air, before Winter’s bite would freeze the empty boughs, and snow would fall upon the trees’ crooked backs to bear until Spring returned to melt the snow back into the water that would nourish the earth back to life once again.

Joy decided that she would wash her hair that day—a long and arduous task, though she did not remember a time when it was not. It was merely something that had to be done. Shivering in her thin chemise from the night’s rest, she lit a fire in her bedchamber, and gradually filled a vast water kettle with jugs of water from the well, bearing them up and downstairs, and set it to heat. The activity failed to warm her fully, and the cold air still froze between her skin and the thin linen and penetrated to her bones. She warmed her hands upon the fire for a moment, before turning to the sweeping of the floor of dust and threads—for experience had taught her that none of these things would she want to stick to her hair once it was wet.

While the pot of water heated slowly, she went through the laborious process of undoing her two thick plaits, and laying out her hair about the room such that she could reach every part of it, and so that it would not tangle. Singing as she worked, she started from the very ends, and brushed the thick mass in sections, using the door of her wardrobe as an anchor over which she laid each section so that she could draw the brush through from the very top to the bottom. Joy had to maintain her hair well—for it was the primary way in and out of the tower, as well as being a part of her for as long as she could remember. She was sure there was a time when her hair was not this long, but it, along with her earliest years in the tower, were part of a hazy past she could not call to mind.

Joy lifted the heavy pot from the fire and set it steaming on the floor amidst a spread of towels, and crouching over the heat, began to wet her hair in the water—watching it swirl in the kettle, combing it gently with her fingers as she went—and working section by section until the whole length of her hair was wet. She could not put all her hair into the kettle at once, for it would displace the water so much that it would overflow. Though the water was warm, the heat escaped quickly as she worked and the wet hair surrounding her and clinging to her body became cold as ice, so she tried to act as quickly as she could to stay warm. On her mother’s last visit, she had brought Joy a fresh cake of soap that she had made—this Joy took to her head, and massaged the soap into her scalp. She then let cascades of water from a jug flow over her head until the soap ran off into the kettle. It was inelegant as a process, and often the soap ran into her eyes, but was preferable to her mother helping her.

Wrapping her hair in towels, she squeezed out the excess water by treading upon it in her bare feet, until it dripped no more. It would take an age to dry, and often she would plait it while it was still damp when she had little other option. To keep her hair from tangling while it dried, she secured it with a leather tie every three feet—and, sitting with her chair pushed up against the window, let the full length of her hair out of the window to dry upon the wind while she did some tablet weaving at her loom. It was a peaceful morning, and the sound of birdsong carried up to her. The feel of the sun upon her head was welcome indeed, and lulled her with its gently reassuring warmth. Yet unbidden, a fragment of the conversation of the previous day broke through her reverie—

_“If you are a man, I must tell you your compliment falls on deaf ears.”_

_“Then it is good for me that I am a woman.”_

Joy shook herself, and banished the thought into the deep recesses of her mind. There was no reason for her to think of the knight, Pippa of the Pentangle Order—she would nevermore see her, and all would remain as it ought.

* * *

If Joy thought she had seen the last of Pippa of the Pentangle Order, she was very wrong.

That afternoon, Joy was sitting again by the window, having combed and plaited her hair until it was bound tightly away as usual. She was still weaving, and had only put a few inches upon her work when she thought she heard something upon the wind outside. Her ears pricked up—and then she once again heard the cry of her name from far below. She stood and peered over the edge of the window—her eyes could make out the red of the cloak. She knew her mother did not have such a cloak—and her hand flew up to her chest, feeling her heart suddenly thump against it to realise who it must be. The knight had ridden back, and Joy found herself helpless to refuse her request to be let up.

Joy let her plaits drop into the free air, knowing that she would not be dissuaded by being left at the base of the tower all day—for from what she could tell, Pippa of the Pentangle Order did not seem like a person who would turn away without resolution. She began to hoist Pippa up, worry coursing through her as she considered the possibility that her mother could appear while Pippa was still there, even though it was an unlikelihood. She had told Joy that she would be three days away, as was her habit.

“You risk everything by making a return,” Joy warned, stepping back from the window as Pippa bore herself through, dust from the stone wall showering down from her boots. “I might still harm you with my sickness—and my mother might chance to come by at any moment.”

“One glimpse of your fair face is a risk I am willing to make,” Pippa murmured back. Those words were as handsome as the face Joy remembered, and though she was warm with the effort of her assisted climb, she looked even more radiant for it.

Joy tried her utmost to fight back her foolish feelings clouding her judgment, and hid them in a frown as she began to loop her plaits snaking all about the room over one arm to keep them in order. Pippa’s reappearance struck Joy as cruel, for she had already bidden her farewells to the things of which the knight’s intrusion had reminded her—the life and wonder of the wide world that she, unlike Joy, could freely roam. It was thus with a stiff voice that she asked, “Why have you returned?”

Pippa gave a shy smile, and fell to one knee at her feet, shoulders broad under the drape of her fine cloak. “I came first to beg your forgiveness, for the manner of my entry yesterday.”

Joy looked, in what she convinced herself was a critical way, at the top of Pippa’s bowed head. In truth, she was shocked at this sudden act of supplication and unsure of how to proceed. She cleared her throat. “And for the manner of your entry today?”

The knight raised her head, her smile turning sheepish. “I must also beg your forgiveness for that. I was a mile past the nearest village when I thought I might—take my chances that you might answer five more questions if I came back, since it is a new day. I suppose you intrigue me.”

Pursing her lips against the flutter in her stomach in response to that smile, Joy glanced her up and down. “You rode all the way back here for but five questions more?”

Pippa merely nodded and said, “Of course, my lady.”

Joy was torn. She considered this behaviour rather presumptive, but at the same time, her heart had yearned so curiously for this knight who had stumbled into her life, and she found she had no desire to send her away without agreeing to her questions. Pippa had travelled far, and perhaps amusing her was the least Joy could do. “Very well. Sit, if it pleases you.”

“Where are you going?” Pippa asked, getting to her feet, as Joy began to move towards the stairs.

“To bring you something to eat and drink,” Joy responded simply, and descended into the dark kitchen, her thoughts whirling, and a tear pricking into her eye for a reason she knew not.

She would have asked Pippa to her kitchen table, but it would be dark without a candle, and she was not sure if she trusted herself around one yet when Pippa was there—particularly when she gave one of those smiles. Mildly infuriated at herself for that last thought, she gathered a platter of some bread, a hunk of cheese, and an apple, along with a cup of mead from a dusty bottle that had not been touched in years. She bore it back up the steps to the upper level, and presented it before Pippa, who had taken a seat upon the only chair in the room, beside the window, Joy’s sewing basket at her feet.

“You are a most gracious host,” Pippa remarked, already carving a piece of the bread and cheese with a thin knife she took from her belt.

Joy bobbed her head. It had not escaped her notice that Pippa of the Pentangle Order was her superior, and treating those above her with the respect due to them was something she had implicitly picked up from her mother, even if it was unlikely that she should ever meet anyone of that ilk. She perched rather awkwardly on the end of her bed, and folded her hands in her lap. Even though Pippa referred to her as _my lady_ —an address that Joy secretly delighted in—she knew that as a knight, Pippa was only being courteous. She was under no persuasion that Pippa saw her as an equal.

“It is hardly fair that I should demand questions of you without also offering my own. You must have many things you wish to ask of me,” Pippa commented, the leather cup at her lips as she sipped the mead.

Joy looked at her blankly. It had not occurred to her before that point that she could ask anything of Pippa. Questions were not encouraged—Mother Broomhead had made that quite clear—and as such, she shook her head. 

To Joy’s relief, Pippa did not appear disappointed or offended. “Then I shall begin. How do you occupy yourself here?”

Joy tightened her hands in her lap, and sat up a little straighter. “I bake bread, make clothes, weave, and embroider.”

Pippa’s eyes lit up in wonderment, and she held up the bread. “Speaking of the bread, it is very good. And you must have many wardrobes full of clothing.”

“I do not,” Joy responded shortly. “Everything I make that I do not need to survive—my mother takes it for the poor. She goes from village to village, giving out clothes and bread to those who need it.”

“Then I must find her, and thank her for contributions to the kingdom,” Pippa said, a thoughtful expression crossing her face.

Joy took a sharp intake of breath in alarm. “You must not reveal that you have seen me or been to this tower—”

“I would not betray you, my lady.” The knight smiled, and Joy felt that involuntary twinge in her heart again.

They talked for a while—Pippa taking the lead by asking the questions, and Joy giving her answers, slowly yielding more information as she grew more comfortable. Pippa drew the chair closer to her so that they could speak more freely, and Joy found herself recognising that she held a deep awe for the knight—admiration for what she imagined was the noblest of countenances, curiosity for why Pippa should be so interested in her—and mystery for why she should come back to this tower, whose storage held nothing more interesting than thread and cloth and a small food supply for a single person. A shiver of something like panic passed through her as she realised how out of control she was in this situation—but the panic seemed to fade, the longer she looked into Pippa’s tawny brown eyes.

Several times, Joy could give no answer to Pippa’s questions—for she did not remember where she had grown up, nor the names of the parents who bore her—but she could answer quite eloquently on her work and about what she enjoyed about each handicraft. Pippa, of course, had her questions about Joy’s hair that she begun to ask about upon her first visit—how she cared for it, how it came to be such a great length, and how long it took to brush it from root to end. While Joy described her methods for dealing with her thirty yards of hair, and how she would wash it, as she had done that morning—she could not keep her eyes from Pippa as she ran her own hands through her short golden hair—the way she swept it back from her forehead before it settled neatly back into place was entrancing. Ere long, Joy realised that she had not been keeping count of the questions Pippa had been asking, and the five had been surpassed. Yet she said nothing of it, and let Pippa leap from question to question as she pleased. After all, Joy’s inner determination to be sceptical had by now dwindled into the quietest of whispers.

“I fear that I have asked my five questions fivefold,” Pippa confessed.

“You had much to ask, and I—” Joy paused, finding her cheeks warm as she tore her gaze from Pippa’s face. “I found myself unwilling to stop you.”

“You are a maiden of much fascination, Joy.” 

It was the first time Pippa had spoken her name, other than to call up to the tower, and it only served to deepen the colour blooming in her face. Joy did not think herself fascinating at all. Searching for truth, she looked back at Pippa—but merely to further confound her, she found it earnest. “How can that be, when I have seen so little of the world?”

“Confined as you are, you have managed to make a world all your own here,” Pippa replied. 

Pippa extended her hand towards Joy’s, as if in offer. Joy unfurled her fingers and found herself reaching out her hand, ashamed of how it shook, but hesitated. She was not worthy enough to hold the hand of a knight. In the instant before she made to withdrew it, however, Pippa caught her trembling hand in her own—warm, assured, and gallant.

“Your fingers are so cold,” she said softly, in barely more than a breath.

“I apologise.” She knew Pippa was only being kind with all her gentility and compliments and pleasantries, as befitted her station. She would not ask the knight to degrade herself by trying to convince her on the matter. “Mother shall be back tomorrow. She must return every third day, in order that she might give me the draught that suppresses the effects of my sickness.”

“What is your mother like?”

Joy swallowed, her hand still enclosed in Pippa’s warmth. Her tact of changing the subject had not made things any simpler, nor made Pippa let go of her hand. Her mouth went dry—she moistened her lips before saying, “She treats me with all the kindness she can, and brings me all the food I need, and is true and charitable to all she meets, by all accounts.”

Pippa pierced her with an intense gaze that Joy felt to her very core. “She is fortunate indeed to have such a daughter as you, who speaks so highly of her.”

Joy merely nodded, avoiding the knight’s eyes. It had caused her a great deal of anguish to speak of Mother Broomhead—and furthermore it was not until she was asked to describe her that she found her tongue could not utter all that she truly thought—and even thinking about it baffled her until her mind was all in a fog. The thought that Pippa’s eyes were upon her did nothing to help.

Yet when she chanced a look, Pippa was no longer examining her—the knight instead glanced to the window, where the sun had already circled away from view. The warmth slipped from Joy’s hand as she withdrew. “I am afraid I must take my leave, my lady. I have a message that I must carry onward before the day’s end.”

Joy stood respectfully when Pippa rose, wondering if she had said something that would have caused her to want to leave. A tug of disappointment pulled at her heart, but all she said was, “I understand.”

“When my errand is complete, I shall return. That I promise.” Pippa captured her once again with her eyes, filled with an honesty that persuaded Joy of her conviction. 

“You must not—” Joy hastily said. “Not until nightfall tomorrow, if you perchance should wish to visit again.”

Pippa’s expression grew ever more ardent. “I daresay it would please me greatly to look upon your fair face once more, Lady Joy.”

The blush that coloured her cheek could have rivalled the dye of Pippa’s red cloak. “I will hang a piece of cloth by the window if my mother should be in, so you will know not to call to me. She is particularly insistent on the matter of my isolation. Were she to discover you—”

Pippa nodded in understanding, and turned to ready herself by the window, but Joy stopped her with a hand to her arm, making contact with the rings of the mail under her fingertips. Her own daring almost shocked her from being able to speak—but she managed to say, “Please, be careful.”

If Pippa was surprised by Joy grabbing her arm, she did not show it. Her eyes were shadowed as she nodded to Joy, their usual golden brown dark as tree bark. “I will. Farewell, until next we meet.”

With few other words, Pippa wound her hands about Joy’s plaits, and cast herself out into the free air. Above, Joy watched over her, feeding her hair over the hook as the knight made her descent, and then rode off without her, under the cover of the woods. That was all that it took for someone like Pippa—she desired to go, and go she did, with all that she required laid out easily before her, and the land unfurling its wings to her and her steed. Alone once more, Joy pulled up the lengths of her plaits that were drifting forlorn in the breeze, that Pippa had held in her hands—Pippa, who by now was riding off into the wide world beyond the narrow angle of the horizon Joy could see.

The pleasure of Pippa’s company had been so brief, and yet so welcome. She held onto her plaits tightly, and hoped that the next time that she saw Pippa, they could speak for longer—and perhaps Joy, if she were to feel stable enough in her emotions, could show her the rest of her tower by candlelight.

Joy was aware that she had an intense fascination for this woman—and well she might, for she had never seen or heard of a woman of her like. Along with her courtly words, Pippa had haunted her with an image she could not banish. Joy crossed the shadowed wooden floor to the wardrobe where she had concealed the embroidered cloak that she kept a secret from her mother. From the very back, within some scraps of fabric, she found the woollen material textured with the weight of all the needlework, and sat upon the seat that Pippa had so recently occupied. 

Joy touched her fingertips to the space she had left for the knight’s head, and could finally see that which had evaded her for so long—and, after fumbling for her thimble and sewing box, resolved to paint Pippa’s face with thread. All the while she had been trying to conceive of a man to fill it, yet now she realised she had been waiting for the wrong muse. There would be no bearded face or wires of long hair hanging to the shoulder—her muse was fair, with short golden hair and a smooth cheek. From her spools, she selected the richest of browns for those beautiful eyes, and threaded the eye of her needle—and she sank herself into the task of embroidering the face of the woman whose image now consumed her.

* * *

Joy flew about the room, desperate to ensure that every sign that Pippa had been there was scourged from sight. She had awoken late after spending much of the night in the glow of a candle, tracing the curves of Pippa’s jaw with single strands of thread, and now it was already time for her mother to come by. She wrapped the cloak back in the scraps of fabric and put it away in the back of the wardrobe—and returned her needles and threads to their box, lest these should chance to rouse her mother’s suspicion and give her away.

Joy had been dreading the day that her mother would return, for it meant a day without Pippa—a prospect that she would never have anticipated thinking, for the idea of a visitor had been so alien to her. She had accomplished only a little in the times that Pippa had visited, in the evenings when she had left. On the first fews days she had been sat at her loom weaving continually, for Pippa had only been there a short while, but the design was complex and would take much more work. She had worked with renewed energy, but there had simply not been enough hours to catch up with her usual rate of work—and now in a panic, had cut a bolt of cloth on her floor into rectangles, and was sewing it together as hastily as she could into a simple cotte, while a batch of bread baked in the glowing oven in the kitchen downstairs.

After mid-morning passed, and as she was about to grow truly anxious that her mother was delayed and would be back upon another day when she had not warned Pippa—her mother called up—and she could tell by her voice that it was she and not Pippa, whose tongue was much sweeter to her ear. She could see no sign of the red cloak, nor of the white horse—but Joy had survived for many a year without either of those sights, and chastised herself for the feeling of loss she had as she let down her hair for someone who was not Pippa.

First she drew up a parcel of supplies, and then another. Each length of her braids that she drew up was full of guilt—for she had disobeyed the most basic of her mother’s rules she had forsworn never to break. She had been visited—and more than once. Was she truly so weak as to trust the first person who entered her life—to think her fair enough to be above reproach or caution? She had not even succeeded in dissuading Pippa from coming back—and her warnings had not curbed her keenness to see her. Joy could already feel the whip of her mother’s tongue and knew that she could never confess to her what had transpired in her absence. She ought to have been more careful—she ought to have spurned Pippa as soon as she had climbed up her hair into her life. Defending herself, however, had never been a strength of hers.

Mother Broomhead herself appeared at the window now, and it was strange how her heart dropped to see her instead of the bright face of Pippa. Her hair underneath the shaded hood of her cloak was pale and threaded with silver, her skin like wrinkled linen, and she looked even older than she had done before—yet Joy had never before thought of her in such disparaging terms before. It was ludicrous—it had only been but two occasions that Pippa had visited, but already Joy felt as though she had known her for many a year. She wore the passion and the shame of it in the blush that crept to her cheeks, like a guilty brand upon her face.

Her mother peered at her under from her hood. “What ails you, my child? Something is different about you.”

“Nothing, mother. I am merely pleased to see you,” Joy responded, her skin prickling all over with the lie she was telling. She busied herself in putting away the wools and fabrics her mother had brought to avoid looking at her.

“And what have you made in my absence? I hope there is more in the way of bread than clothing, if this is all you have managed to make.” Mother Broomhead plucked at the almost-finished cotte that Joy had tried to put together.

Joy had rehearsed what she would say, for she had once before failed to produce enough to please her mother, and had taken the punishment she had received as penance and a reminder to not spend her days so idly. “Mother, I must apologise. I took a chill in the night and had a headache that pounded in my head until yesterday eve.”

Her mother looked at her sharply, with her lips forming a scowl. “Your choler must be up. I should fetch my leeches—”

“No, Mother,” Joy said, all too hastily, almost dropping a bolt of wool fabric as she bore it over to the shelf. “There is no more pain.”

Mother Broomhead gave a sniff of derision. “You disappoint me, girl. I suppose it magically vanished just in time.”

“Please, Mother,” Joy begged, but she could not find it in herself to add _believe me_. It was bad enough that she was hiding the existence of her visitor. The lie about the headache gave her no pleasure to tell.

“Finish it now,” her mother snapped at her, pointing to where the bundle of unfinished sewing lay in the basket by the chair.

“Yes, Mother,” Joy said. As soon as her mother descended to the kitchen, she let an off-cut of fabric drape over the window sill, and watched it flutter in the breeze for a moment, before she miserably set herself to work.

* * *

By the time her finally mother left that evening, Joy ached to see Pippa again. She retrieved the fabric from the window, and whiled away the dark hours waiting for her in baking and sewing, even though her fingers still ached and were marked with pinpricks from her rushed finishing of the cotte. It felt so strange that there had been a time when she had not known the face or name of the beautiful knight who had entered her life—even though the last time her mother had visited she had never dreamt that she would ever have broken her lonely existence. Yet until then, she had never known what it was like to be lonely—she had lived in ignorance of what it was like to know another, and now that she knew it, it had opened the floodgate and all her emotions overwhelmed her in a rush. Though her mother’s tea had left her dulled, Pippa brought something new to her heart. She waited, awake in the darkness, wondering if she should wait for Pippa’s return, until slumber finally took her.

Upon the next morning, Joy let her hands play over the stone edge of the window, delight as her fingers reached out and met open air, knowing the whispered promise that Pippa had said. _“I will return, my lady. I swear it.”_

Surely enough, as true as her word, Pippa came back. Several hours hence, Joy heard the whinny of a horse—and rushing to the window, she spied the ghostly shape of her palfrey as Pippa rode into the clearing. Her heart skipped in elation and she hastened to drop her plaits down even before Pippa could call up. The initial tug at her plaits caught her off-guard, and she stumbled—but regained her footing to try to counterbalance Pippa’s weight. Though her limbs burned with the effort of drawing her plaits over the hook—she always felt weaker after she had drunk her mother’s draughts—her excitement was so intense that she disregarded her own pain for the promise of seeing Pippa once more.

At last, Pippa’s hand swung out from the plaits to grip the edge of the stone window sill—then she lifted herself up bodily and through into Joy’s bed chamber, graceful and strong as ever. Joy’s eyes filled with tears to see her—for after her mother’s visit yesterday, she knew that she had repaid her mother’s kindness with a betrayal of her trust, and forsaken her duty to the poor with time spent in idle conversation with her mysterious and handsome knight—but she had lived for so long without knowing another like herself, and her heart longed for the connection she felt to Pippa. She would have to be more careful, and work harder to keep up with her duties—but for now, she would indulge her desires once more.

Pippa held out her hand in greeting, and Joy slipped hers into it, not knowing what she ought to expect. Pippa bent her head to Joy’s hand, and Joy felt the imprint of Pippa’s precious lips upon it. Heart floundering at this unexpected contact, Joy let one of the tears tickle down the side of her nose, unable to hold it back any longer. She did not know why she cried when she should be so happy to be reunited with the woman whose face had been in her thoughts almost constantly since she had first tricked her way in.

“Is something wrong?”

“N-nothing—” Joy stuttered. She could not tell Pippa of how overwhelmed she felt to see her, to have had her hand kissed by her—for that would surely break some rule of impropriety. “It is such a blessing to see you. Mother’s visit—” Joy stopped herself—or rather, her own tongue stopped her—from saying more.

Pippa’s eyes grew full with tenderness to see her weep. Feeling Pippa’s gaze upon her, Joy tried instead to let go of the pressure that had weighed so heavily upon her after the whip of her mother’s tongue had left its strokes—and gave into the elation that blossomed in her breast, finally smiling.

Ever so softly, Pippa asked, “Would you like me to tell you about myself?”

“Yes,” Joy whispered, feeling that there was nothing more that she wanted in the world, and allowed Pippa to guide her to the bed, where she sat in a daze after her flurry of emotion.

It was a restorative balm to hear Pippa speak of the mountains and woods she knew, and of the solemn beauty of nature that was her companion for many of her days. Joy learnt that Pippa had become a knight against her parents’ wishes—they had assumed she was merely going on a pilgrimage, and were not best pleased when they discovered she had single-handedly formed a religious order. She glossed somewhat over her upbringing—she was of noble birth, and the only child her mother could bear before she became barren, with all the pressures that came with being expected to form a marriage to connect her family favourably with another. Resenting this fate, she committed herself to a life dedicated to protecting the lives of others against those who would take advantage of them. Many of her days now she spent patrolling the lands to ensure that the surrounding towns villages were not about to be beset by brigands or warring lords wanting to seize land that was not theirs. Sitting on the edge of her bed, listening attentively, and taking up some sewing, Joy watched Pippa’s face light up as she spoke of what she most loved about her life—the thrill of riding—visiting all of the different villages—taking care of her palfrey, whose name Joy learnt was Pea—and watching the sun setting as she made camp.

“I cannot remember what the sunset is like,” Joy admitted, still feeling rather delicate.

“How can that be so?” Pippa asked, as if it were the oddest statement she had ever heard.

Joy merely looked at her, pitying her for her innocence. “My window faces east.”

“Oh.” Pippa’s face grew gaunt at this idea, and she leapt up to her feet to cross to the window. Her golden brown eyes softened with hurt. “This is the way you see the world.”

“It is the only window, yes.”

“You have only ever seen this view.”

Joy cut a new ell of thread with which to continue her sewing. “I remember no other.”

Pippa, oblivious to Joy’s nonchalance, kneaded her forehead in her hand. “I am sorry—here I go speaking all about the things I love, but—I fear I am making you miserable with all this talk about the adventures I have that you cannot.”

Joy secured her needle in the fabric, and put it down in her lap, turning her full attention to Pippa. “It is quite all right. I long to hear about what you enjoy—what inspires you—what you find beautiful. Do not pity me for what I cannot see—tell me of the world as you see it through your eyes, so that I might love it just as you.”

Pippa nodded her head low in her humility. “I will do my best to bring the world to you, for you deserve it like no other.”

* * *

Each day that Pippa visited renewed Joy little by little, and she came to expect Pippa almost daily. Sometimes she could only stay a short while—and others she stayed many the long hour, while Joy would weave at the wooden frame of her loom or sew, and she would let Pippa speak of herself or recite literature that she knew by heart. The stories she told were of Beowulf, of the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome, of heroic knights, or of romances between star-crossed lovers. She would enact some of the more dramatic moments of conflict with her sword held aloft, the sun flashing off the blade. The first time Joy saw her unsheathe it, she gasped at the sight of the cold, sharp steel—but thereafter it became merely a thrill she looked forward to. All the while, Joy would watch her—often becoming too distracted to keep a good pace with her work, but held her needle braced against her thimble and tried to convince herself that she was still being productive.

When Joy felt comfortable enough—and out of some necessity, since it was never light for long—she eventually lit a candle to see if she could control her feelings. The flame flickered, unsteady at first—and Joy almost blew it out for fear—but it stabilised and held strong. 

Pippa followed eagerly down the stairs to see more of Joy’s domain—the kitchen, the storage levels that housed her food and some additional supplies for her sewing or weaving, and at the very bottom, the well from which she drew her fresh water. Pippa was intrigued by the well, for she had never seen a well inside a tower before. Joy had never questioned it, for she had known nothing else. It was awkward inviting Pippa down into her darkness, for she knew that Pippa did not understand it quite as she, and Joy found it difficult to explain why it comforted her. It was much more natural to be by the window—where she could see the light playing in Pippa’s tawny eyes and through her golden hair.

Their friendship felt as though it were growing much closer, to Joy’s delight. They were so unlike each other—Joy cautious, and Pippa adventurous—that she had wondered whether Pippa would soon bore of her, but she never wavered from her steadfast devotion. Joy regretted only that Pippa maintained a respectful distance, when she was beginning to realise that she felt more and more drawn to her. A kiss upon the back of her hand upon her entry—a lingering of their fingers together when passing bread—these were as close as it seemed Pippa wanted to chance. Joy did not blame her—for it was true that Pippa did not know her sickness as well as she, nor how it might be passed on. No matter how much Joy might live in hope of something more, she knew that it could never be hers.

Upon one occasion, however, Joy thought she caught a glimpse—a sign of Pippa’s more keen affection. Pippa knelt to kiss Joy’s hand—but then surprised her by turning Joy’s palm upwards, gentle and hesitant.

“I have brought you something, Lady Joy,” Pippa declared, with colour glowing in her cheeks. She drew forth from a fold in her cloak the head of a pink rose, and set it in the hollow of her hand.

Joy cradled the pink bloom in her hands in sheer wonderment. She knew of flowers, of course—she could see dots of colour that she had been told were wildflowers and the blossom upon the trees in the spring—but she had never seen one so close. She instinctively raised it to her nose to smell its sweetness, and something about the smell evoked not a memory, but the feeling of a memory.

Pippa rose to her feet, her expression hopeful. “Does it please you?”

“It is the most wonderful thing,” Joy said thickly, trying to hold back her tears as she gazed into the delicate pink petals as they folded close around each other in a whorl of bright colour. To Pippa, it might have been of trivial consequence—a throwaway gesture—but to Joy it was a gift beyond compare. To imagine Pippa plucking it, and thinking of her, and mounting her palfrey to bring it all this way to her lonely tower—she knew she must not imagine that it was anything more than her promise to show her the wonders that existed in the world beyond Joy’s window, but all her discipline could not extinguish the hope of a foolish heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's monday, so here's the next chapter! hope you enjoyed this one. let me know what you liked in the comments!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble arises as Pippa reveals something distressing to Joy.

Joy had never been too attentive to the passing of days before Pippa came. Yet now, she felt each day had new meaning, for Pippa gave her reason to mark the days as more significant than the days she must wash her underthings and aprons or the devote to the endless production of things for her mother. She became more aware of when her mother’s visits would fall, and continued to put out a piece of bright cloth that Pippa could see from far enough away so that she would know to stay clear. They were playing with fire, and Joy worried every day what might happen were they were to be discovered. 

Yet every day, she also awoke feeling hopeful for what she might experience with Pippa—what new stories she would bring. When she left, Joy would find the rose head that Pippa had brought and touch its pink petals with the very tips of her fingers to convince herself that it was all real. For the first time in years, she felt dreams come to her in the night while she slept—vague, indistinct—the murmur of something warm against her lips, like she imagined the sweetest kiss might taste.

On one such day, she found herself awoken from a night of dreaming several hours before dawn by a low moaning wind that swirled through her bedchamber. Try as she might, she could not get back to sleep—the gentle dream to which she wanted to return was but a moment of bliss so easily scattered to the wind that now sent shivers through her.

Joy resolved that it was early enough that she could comb out her hair before Pippa would make her visit. Usually she would do this in the evenings once Pippa had taken her leave, for it was a task that took some time and she did not wish to be caught with her hair unbound, should either Pippa or her mother call up to her. Yet today, she would make herself look as pleasant as she could, with the limited graces afforded to her by nature—and perhaps she would be less of a burden for Pippa to look upon. She sang softly under her breath as a comfort to her unsettled soul while she drew her comb through her hair until it shone in the candlelight.

It was gradually becoming light, and Joy hastened to complete her task and re-plait it into her two customary braids. Outside, the wind began to whip the trees about, as they struggled to hold onto their leaves—and it blew in through the window, setting the loose sections of her hair flying from where they lay neatly, and Joy had to comb again the parts that had been tumbled about before she could plait it. She heard no sound of Pippa’s voice calling up, nor could she see her white horse, nor the cloak of red that flowed about her as she rode. When she finished and still saw no sign of her, tempting though it was to sit by the window and sing until Pippa came, she thought she had better make the best of her time. She prepared a batch of bread dough, waited for it to rise, divided it into loaves, and set them to bake. The smell of baking bread was glorious. Yet still Pippa did not come.

Deciding that her time ought to be spent in a better way than being anxious over Pippa, Joy felt she should make a start on a garment for her mother to give away—in her mind, with a strange yearning in her heart, she could picture something complicated and luxurious that would flow on the air as the wearer twirled about. She prepared her only bolt of the finest sendal for a bliaut, laying out the fabric on the floor and cutting it with the greatest care—and was halfway to basting the pieces of the sleeve together when she heard her name cried out on the blustery wind. 

“Joy! Joy!”

Pippa’s voice sounded distant and, if Joy’s imagination did not betray her, distraught—Joy deposited the sendal into her sewing basket at once, and threw her hair down for Pippa, worry lining her brow. It was difficult for Pippa to climb, since the wind was so strong—in a single blast, she lost her footing on the side of the tower and went careening off to the side. Joy thought she would fall—but the figure of the knight kept ahold of her plaits and hung on for dear life until the wind died down. Joy pulled her higher and higher, pushing through the ache in her arms and shoulders and hands, until finally Pippa’s damp wind-tousled hair emerged, and Joy reached out desperately to her to help her through. Her cloak was dark and heavy with rain through which she must have ridden, for it was not raining yet where her tower stood.

Though her garments looked worse for wear, Pippa’s eyes were soft to see Joy, and she took her hand as soon as she was able, and kissed it. “Thank you—the weather has turned foul today. I rode through such a storm to get here, and I fear that it will catch up soon. That is what delayed me.” 

Joy sighed heavily with the effort she had exerted, but was already in her mind thinking of how she would make Pippa some hot stew to warm her up, and offer her some fresh clothes. “I am simply relieved that you are safe.”

Instead of the usual smile, Pippa’s mouth suddenly set in concern. “My good Lady Joy,” she started, “I fear I do not bring you good tidings.”

“What is it?” Joy whispered, light-headed and full of dread to hear the answer. A thousand tragedies encircled her mind as she worried—that Pippa would no longer be able to see her, or that Pippa would have to leave on a long journey, or that she had contracted some kind of illness from visiting Joy. Or perhaps Mother Broomhead had discovered her, and this was her last farewell.

“It pains me sorely to tell you—but there is no way to disguise this in pretty words.” Pippa shook her head, clearly affected by some turmoil within. “I sought out your mother, but the woman I found was far from the great philanthropist you believe her to be. Your bread is not given to the poor, and nor are your garments put upon their backs. These are sold in the market, for a great profit.”

Joy’s heart hammered in her chest. Of all the possibilities that she had imagined, this had not even been remotely close. Her mother could not have been lying to her. It was wrong—or a misunderstanding. There must be dozens of old women who sold fine goods at the market. Pippa _must_ be mistaken.

“I can see that you do not believe me,” Pippa said, her voice cracking with regret. She reached into the pouch at her waist and drew forth a length of a tablet-woven belt.

Joy slipped the belt from Pippa’s palm, and traced her fingers over the design. It was the very same pattern—and the thread matched the wool that was still wound on the shuttle. “This—this was the very belt that I gave to her not two days hence,” Joy stammered.

“And it cost me no small weight in silver.”

Joy hardly knew what to think. For all these years she had handed over her wares freely to be given as charity—her mother had been deceiving her? That could not be right. “But is this not how she manages to bring back goods for me to survive? She must trade some, I suppose, in order to keep us both well-fed and cared for.”

“I am afraid that is not so. I followed her for the whole day, and observed her stealing. I do not know how she managed it, but one moment the goods were on the stall, and the next they were in her cart. Yet with the amount of money I saw given over to her that day, she could buy them all out of stock. Moreover, it is not only the rich she sells to—I watched her with my own eyes hoodwink a poor man into signing away his year’s wages for but a single loaf of bread.”

Her mother was good. Her mother was kind. She had always cared for her. “No—” Joy’s knees gave out from under her—Pippa caught her, and helped her into the chair. “I cannot believe it. I will not.” Tears blurred her vision, until all that she could see was the weave of the belt she had made, still clamped in her hands. The pattern made her feel sick to her stomach.

“I wish that you did not have to,” Pippa whispered. Her finger traced the curve of Joy’s cheek, wiping away her tears. “I would wager she has been lying to you about more than just this.”

Joy looked up, her hand rising to her cheek where Pippa’s hand had just been, but her confusion won over from her emotions over the tender act. “What do you mean by that?”

“Your sickness. You are hearty as any woman I have seen, and strong. Your hair grows long without breaking. You manage a great deal more in a day than most achieve in a week. I do not believe you are sick at all.”

Joy shook her head. She did not want to believe it. Much as she trusted Pippa, it went against everything in her to turn her mind against her mother. She had raised her and taken her in when none other would. “That is because I continue to take the draught my mother makes for me.”

“Then do not take it, next time she bids you drink it. Pour it away when her back is turned,” Pippa urged her. “I believe there is something unusual about you, but it is not a curse. It is a blessing that she is trying to keep from you.” 

Joy agreed to this, if only to prove Pippa was mistaken. There could be no malice in her mother’s heart. She would show it.

“If the next time we meet, you are truly ill, then I vow I will speak no more on this and you will have my most humble apology. But know this—if she is keeping you a prisoner here without reason, I vow to do all I can to grant your freedom.”

Joy feared that Pippa was wrong. There must be a simple explanation. She knew that the tea eased her symptoms—and that without it, she was dangerous. That was the only reason she had to be kept here. She was no one’s prisoner.

* * *

Even though her heart rebelled against it, Joy resolved to do as Pippa told her. She felt beholden to her for her kindness, but knew she owed it to her mother to prove her innocence. Pippa hardly seemed like the type of person who would deceive her—but then again, what did she know of deception—she, who had spent her life in a tower with none but her mother who came by once every few days? That same mother had allegedly been deceiving her for her entire life. Joy did not know whether to be upset at Pippa for not trusting her mother, or ashamed at herself for having been misled for so many years by the only person she had contact with.

Pippa had left her not long after her accusation, parting only with a few words that she would be away for at least a week on business. It had been the gravest that Joy had seen Pippa—she did not wish to press her for the reason, but she felt in her heart as though Pippa had turned cold to her. Was there none in her life that cared for her? It filled Joy with no pleasure to think of such a long stretch of time without Pippa to break up the monotony of the days—but for all she knew, Pippa had now tired of her and was weaning her off the pleasure of her company—or was punishing her for her reluctance to believe that her mother was not all she seemed. She went to her wardrobe where she had hidden the pink rose Pippa had gallantly brought her, and found it dry—the petals now pale and fragile. Joy’s greatest fear was that without Pippa, her life would become just as sapped of all its colour and emotion—and that now she had felt what it was like to have a friend, it would hurt all the more to have that taken from her.

The next day, when Mother Broomhead came by to give her the tea, Joy watched closely from a stool in the kitchen as she put the pot to the cooking fire, seeking her deeply shadowed face for signs of her deception. Joy had never seen it before, and could detect nothing now. Perhaps it was all in Pippa’s imagination—but she knew she had to follow Pippa’s will. 

Her mother poured out the hot liquid into a cup for her. “Drink up, my child,” she urged her, with a kindly smile.

“Of course, Mother,” Joy replied, feeling more alert and on edge than she had ever felt in her life—even moreso than when Pippa had burst through her window.

Joy went upstairs to escape the heady smoke in the kitchen, just as she usually would do—while her mother went down to the well to wash herself. Full of trepidation, she stole over to the window and poured out the draught out over the edge—until not a drop was left—heart thudding painfully in her breast. This was not her first act of disobedience against her mother, but it felt like the worst so far. She took the opportunity to hang the cloth to show that her mother was present, and draped it carefully over the stone sill—even though she knew that Pippa would not be coming this way for many days hence. Some part of her still hoped that Pippa, wherever she was, might chance to turn her head towards the tower and see it—and understand.

Joy heard her mother walking across the floorboards below. She must still keep up the pretence that she had drunk of the draught—she remembered the dull way her mind would feel almost as soon as the liquid would meet her lips, and tried to will her restlessness into docility. She blinked slower, breathed deeply, and tried her utmost to seem tired and without the awareness that was coursing through her, like a wild horse. Although Joy knew that she felt more alert, she could not ascribe this to any sort of benefit for having not taken the tea. Perhaps the tea’s effect of making her dull was merely a normal part of the treatment of her illness. The racing thoughts she felt now—the panic—was that part of the illness, a rush of feeling because she had defied her mother—or was it really the usual way that people felt?

Her mother left later that evening, after suspecting nothing, even through Joy serving her dinner—and Joy finally collapsed upon her bed after the effort of maintaining the act for so long. She had done it—and now she must wait to see what would become of her without the draught that her mother insisted she needed to survive.

The days came and went in emptiness, as Joy pondered her mother’s deception alone, with no distraction but the sewing that she was no longer certain she wished to do—for she felt no sickness come to her, as she expected. Her head was not hot—nor did she feel any pain anywhere. By and by, she even found herself grow stronger in heart and mind—and as she found her thoughts sharpen, her fear for her situation increased. It felt like she was waking up after a long sleep—except the reality she was waking up into was more like a nightmare. She was beginning to feel that Pippa had been correct.

The next time Mother Broomhead visited, it was after several days of rain and wind lashing against the side of the tower—the weather her penitence for uncovering the truth about her mother. Her stomach soured as her mother embraced her, her mother’s drenched clothing limp and clinging to Joy’s skin as they lingered together. Joy wondered how she would ever keep up this pretence. The last shred of faith she had was that Pippa would know what to do when she returned.

After managing to cast the tea from the window once more, Joy descended the steps silently, daring to hope that Mother Broomhead would believe her act once again. She began to prepare some food for her and her mother, wishing somehow that she could turn the tables on her—to slip something into _her_ food that would weaken her resolve or sicken her. Joy was untrained, however, in such arts, and she did not think she had it in herself to do something so malicious. The last thing she wanted was to become anything like Mother Broomhead.

Mother Broomhead, if she suspected anything, did not show it. She ate, while Joy asked her of the families to which she had given her bread and clothing. Mother Broomhead gave the same old lies—a poor widow and her three children, an old blind man and his wife, and a young couple who could not afford their tithe. Joy nodded, knowing now with her keener mind that at least one of these descriptions had been used before. She again marvelled at how she had never realised before. The draught must have been far more potent than she had suspected.

The rain pelted on, through dinner, and later into the evening, as Joy waited impatiently for her mother to leave. Pippa was to come back from her business soon—and this she hoped was to be Mother Broomhead’s last visit before that would occur. To Joy’s horror, Mother Broomhead was reluctant to leave the warm fireplace to go out into the inhospitable weather. 

“You don’t want to send your poor mother out into the rain, do you?” Mother Broomhead said, when Joy yawned pointedly and asked whether she had ought to be getting on the road.

“Of course not, Mother. You are welcome to stay as long as you need.” The flame of the candle by Joy’s side flickered—and Joy felt that it did so with her own dread. She had to be careful.

To focus her thoughts on something else, Joy bent herself to some sewing—deliberately going laboriously slow, as she felt she did when she had just drunk the tea. Water droplets dripped from the makeshift curtain she had put up over the window to stop the rain from pouring in. It had now been hours later than her mother would normally stay, and Joy worried that she might spend the night.

“What would you say to more tea, my child?”

Joy had to stop herself from reacting with panic to this—to cover up her involuntary widening of her eyes, she blinked slowly and shook herself, as if her eyes had glazed over from exhaustion rather than shock. “What was that, Mother? I think I nodded off.”

“More tea?” she asked, in a louder and more impatient tone than before.

“Oh—no, thank you. I am too tired to be thirsty.” To illustrate her point, she lowered her sewing to her lap, and half-heartedly resumed stitching.

“It will help you rest,” urged Mother Broomhead.

“No, truly, I am nearly asleep as it is.” Joy of course could not accept—for it would set back everything if she were to drink the tea again, and she could not willingly allow herself to be drugged. 

The tension in the room grew uncomfortable as her mother eyed her suspiciously while she struggled to keep as calm and as slow as possible. If the candle should betray her again—

“Very well. I am only looking out for you.”

Joy gave a sleepy smile, even though inside she was panicking beyond measure. “I know, Mother.”

The rain eventually cleared up, by which point Joy’s pretend tiredness had become genuine. Mercifully, Mother Broomhead decided that she needed to depart, and Joy let her climb down, unsure whether her relief was sufficiently disguised.

Once Mother Broomhead’s lantern bobbed off into the woods and Joy was alone with her thoughts, the sight of the stars breaking through the heavy cloud gave her a renewed burst of energy—they brought a lightness to her heart, just as the star device upon Pippa’s surcoat and shield would when Pippa finally made her return.

She turned back to the room, where the candle flickered in the wind that moaned over the window. Joy had not deliberately attempted to manipulate the flame for a while—but now she was drawn to it. Her long fingers played around the candle’s flame, swirling it cautiously until she could sense something within herself responding to it. All of a sudden, it jumped from the wick to her fingertips—where it licked across her hand without pain or damaging her skin. But when she closed her fingers over her palm, the fire doused itself, plunging her into near darkness. Only the last embers of the fireplace glowed dimly. She gazed in awe at her hand—trying to make the flame appear once more. Try as she might, she could not get it to surge back to life again. But there was no mistaking it this time—she had done something extraordinary.

* * *

Upon awakening in the morning, Joy shuddered to remember the night before and how close her mother had come to forcing more draught down her. She was now fully aware of the fact that her mother—if she could even call her that—had been keeping her downtrodden her whole life, forcing her to work by preying on her gullibility and compassion. Joy would stand it no more. She was not ill, and had never been—but there _was_ something peculiar about her. The way she had held the candle’s fire in her hand, she had felt _powerful_ , and it scared and thrilled her in equal measure. 

She lit a candle to take down to the kitchen, finding warmth and hope in its simplicity—and wondering what the full extent of her peculiarity might be. The draught had been subduing it—and she wondered if perhaps she might be able to do more as the days marched on.

As Joy reached for the pot she used to heat water, she was horrified to see it rising on its own before she touched it, hovering eerily and flashing in the glow of the candle. She flinched, and the pot began to fall, and instinctively her hand darted out. Before it could crash to the ground, however, it was caught again in mid-air, and gently rose up to her open hand. Her fingers closed upon the rim, and she set it on the table, shivering all over with shock, before managing to sit herself down on one of the stools.

What had that been? More strange effects from her so-called illness? She clutched her chest to steady her breath and to stay the fear that was rushing around her. If any of the story Mother Broomhead had told her about how she came to be separated from her parents had indeed had any amount of truth to it, she had been cursed by a witch. Surely a witch would have made her weak, or contagious, or taken one of her senses. Yet it was a curious thing, that she was instead cursed with powers that a witch might have—power that Joy was sure if honed properly, could be used for good. 

All Joy knew for certain that Mother Broomhead was heartless. The spell had been broken now—and through the cracks, her motivations were plain to see. There was still much Joy could not understand, and much to attempt to unravel. She only hoped that Pippa would be back soon—she needed her strength to help her emerge the better from this. But Joy had forgotten how many days had passed since Pippa had left, and did not know when she should make her return. She looked to her sewing—could she continue, knowing what she knew now? Yet she could think of few other ways to while away her time. She was too afraid to try to control her—ought she to call them abilities?—lest something disastrous happened.

A wonderful thought occurred to her in a spark—she could make something for Pippa instead of continuing to make things for the countless unknown strangers Mother Broomhead would swindle. She did not know what Pippa would like, since she had never seen her out of her armour and heraldic regalia. Picturing Pippa in her mind’s eye—she was not as tall as Joy, so it would not need to be as long as a garment she might make for herself. She would make her a wool cotte, she thought as she bore her candle down to the storage room and ran her hands over her fabrics, finding a light madder-dyed wool. There was no bold scarlet like that of Pippa’s cloak—for that was made with far finer dyes made from cinnabar, and cloth of that kind was hard to come by. She carried the bolt of fabric back to her bower to look at it in the daylight.

Yes, Pippa would look very well in pink.

* * *

“Joy! My Lady Joy!”

Joy dropped the dough she was kneading immediately, dusting off her hands, and dashed up the steep steps to her bower to see if it were truly Pippa. She already knew—only Pippa called her _Lady Joy_ —and the sight only confirmed her excitement.

While Joy could not be certain of how many days had gone by, she could have sworn that it had been longer than a week that Pippa had been gone. She could only measure the time in what she had made—a few simple garments since her mother had last left, including the pink cotte. Joy only hoped that nothing unpleasant had delayed her. 

Excited to have Pippa join her in her solitude again, she threw the bundle of her hair down for her to climb, into the grey, damp air, alive with anticipation—feeling her stomach flip as she thought on how crucial Pippa had become to her life. Joy felt the confirming tug on her hair as Pippa indicated her readiness to ascend, and began to hoist her up. She wondered if Pippa were even wearing her armour, for she brought her up with such ease, it hardly taxed her. Perhaps this strength was yet another unexpected ability—or perhaps she did not notice the strain in her eagerness to see her once more.

Pippa’s hand gripped onto the edge of the windowsill, and she pulled herself through, assisted by Joy, who was overjoyed to see her. Her hair was freshly trimmed, and she looked healthy enough, but her clothing was soiled with mud and rain from all the unkind weather that Joy had seen some of over the week—yet still Joy could think of no more welcome sight than her fair knight. The two horrible encounters with Mother Broomhead, and the loneliness of dealing with her treachery alone—she realised at once that it had all taken its toll on her mood, and that only now could she process it.

Joy did not give Pippa a chance to kiss her hand in her usual respectful greeting, but flung herself into Pippa’s embrace in relief, and felt the strong arms squeeze around her back in comfort as she broke down in tears. She knew that they had never held each other close like this before—all their interactions had been respectful and courtly, as they would be between a lady and her knight—yet now, Joy had need of her, and Pippa’s arms were the right place to receive her. 

“You— you were right,” Joy said between sobs, pressing her face down into Pippa’s golden hair, and curling her fingers into a fold in the star-emblazoned surcoat Pippa wore over her mail. “The tea she was giving me—it weakened me—there has never been any illness—”

Pippa tightened her hold on Joy, steadying her as she wavered. “I wished it would not be so, even though I knew it in my heart.”

Joy did not yet know if she should confess about what had transpired with her strange abilities since she had stopped taking the tea. She did not yet understand fully what was happening. Perhaps she would wait for the right moment. “I am scared—” 

“Joy,” Pippa murmured, loosening her arms from around her. “Look.”

Joy opened her bleary eyes to see what Pippa was drawing out from the hood of her cloak. At first she thought it was a scrap of black fur, but then upon looking closer, she saw that it was a little black kitten—vulnerable and small and stretching her paws.

“I found her nosing around the base of the tower. I think she wanted to find you,” Pippa said softly, and tipped the kitten into Joy’s hands.

Joy had never felt anything so soft or precious in her life, and cried again at just how small the kitten was. The kitten gave a sleepy yawn, showing her maw of tiny sharp teeth, and curled back up into a ball to rest her flop-eared head against Joy’s palm. 

“She feels safe with you. You should keep her.” Pippa smiled, wiping Joy’s tears from her face.

Joy looked down at the serene face of the kitten. Something about the way that she was tucked into her hand made her heart twinge. “Could I?” Joy’s voice cracked as she tried to speak. “I doubt that Mother would approve— yet I suppose I should not heed what she thinks any more.”

“What she wants should not limit you any further,” Pippa said gently. “You can learn to be your own woman, as I have.”

“I am sorry,” Joy sighed, looking down, ashamed. She would not be able to bear the sight of Pippa disappointed in her. “I cannot— I fear that I am not strong like you.”

Pippa’s hand lifted her chin gently until Joy was looking deep into her honeyed brown eyes. “You never need apologise to me, Lady Joy. I will help you to achieve whatever you want. You do not need to know what that is just yet, but know I will always be here to serve you.”

Joy nodded mutely.

“Do you think you wish to continue living here, knowing that your illness—and the reason for your isolation—are but fabrications?”

Joy thought on her abilities. Those could certainly be a reason why she should isolate herself—but she shook her head. “No—but I do not know whether I have the will to leave. What can I do, out in a world of which I know nothing?”

At her unsurety, Pippa appeared to stand more firm than before. “Lady Joy, I will do all in my power to help you settle somewhere, with all that you need. You will not want for anything—be it food, money, clothing—whatever it pleases you to have, I will grant you.”

“I do not know how to thank you,” Joy said, looking back at the sleeping kitten. Somehow the little creature made her feel grounded.

“You need not feel beholden to me,” Pippa murmured, her sentiment sincere. “But—do you mind if I freshen up after my long ride? You can think on what you would like to name your kitten.”

“Of course you may,” Joy said, setting the kitten down upon her bed while she collected a chemise and a pair of hose amongst the new items she had sewn, and gave them to Pippa to change into, along with the pink cotte—trembling as she wondered what Pippa might think of it, and if she should confess that she made it for her. “Take these. You must feel uncomfortable in your wet things.”

Joy allowed Pippa to go down to the base of the tower to wash herself with some water from the well, while she watched the kitten sleep on her bed. All her worries faded from her as she pondered on how she had seen a kitten for a very long time—not in her memory, at least. She dared to run a single finger over her head, which was softer than any fleece—and melted at the lines of her closed eyes, the black nose, and determined chin. Her paws stretched out and tiny claws flexed into the blanket. She decided that she would name her Morgana, after one of the names of legend she had heard Pippa speak of in her stories.

Joy heard Pippa on the stairs before she saw her, her muffled steps growing more distinct. Then up the steps she emerged, carrying the heavy mail hauberk and a padded gambeson over her arm, the mail rings clinking together—and was wearing the fresh clothing that Joy had given her. It was the first time Joy had seen her out of the armour, and the cotte looked very comely on her indeed, falling below her knee, and its long sleeves showing the shape of her arms much smaller without the gambeson and mail over them. She looked softer—more like the gentle soul Joy knew, now that she did not have the dressings of war upon her. Her hair was dark with water, and she seemed much more relaxed once she had deposited the armour in a heap on the floor.

“Did you find everything you needed?” Joy asked cautiously, trying not to blush.

“I did, thank you,” Pippa said, running a hand through her damp hair.

Joy cast her eyes over the garments, with the pretence of examining the fit. “The cotte fits you well.”

“It is a garment of fine quality indeed! I should not be surprised, since it was made by your fair hand.”

Joy gave into the blush that now crept to her ears. “There is a comb on the table, if you should want it.”

“There is little point, my hair being short as it is,” Pippa responded, amused, but took up the comb regardless and brushed her hair neatly with but a few strokes. “There, am I pretty enough now?”

Joy could not help the smile that crossed her face in shyness. “You always look—very handsome.”

Pippa raised her eyebrows. “High praise from you, Lady Joy.”

“Surely not, since I have seen but three faces in my life,” Joy returned, daring to tease her ever so slightly.

“I value every kind word you have to give me,” Pippa said in earnestness.

Joy held onto those words like a talisman in her heart, and turned to stroke the sleeping kitten, who had coiled into a circle in her sleep, with her fur stuck out at odd angles. “I have decided to call her Morgana.”

“A worthy name,” Pippa responded with a fond smile, kneeling by the bed and began tickling her tiny ears.

Joy watched her for a moment, her heart warming—but then cooling as she knew, sooner or later, that she would have to tell Pippa about her abilities. Pippa already knew a little, although Joy did not know if she believed her fully. She stood and walked to the window—chest tightening, unable to keep still—and steeled herself, wringing her hands before her, before stating, “There is something I must tell you.”

At Pippa’s look of slight concern, she proceeded to haltingly explain—“When you said that you believed there was something unusual about me, you were correct. My ability to bend a candle flame to my touch—it seems to have grown in power since I stopped taking the draught. I have also been able to make things move and float without touching them.”

Pippa nodded, seemingly unaffected by what Joy had told her. The tension around Joy’s heart eased. “I have heard of such magic. You must be a witch—you have a great gift.”

_Witch_. She was put in mind of the witch of Mother Broomhead’s tale—the one who was meant to have cursed her. She never thought that the word would apply to her. “A gift.” Joy shook her head in astonishment. She was fortunate indeed that Pippa seemed to accept it. From her limited experience of the world, not all would look so favourably upon one possessed of what Pippa called magic, nor so calmly speak of witchcraft. “And Mother always told me it was a curse.”

“A curse would not give you magic such as this. You must have had it in you before.” Pippa glowed with something like pride, before the pride gave into concern as Joy remained stoic. “You do not seem happy.”

Joy shook her head and looked at the floor. “I am worried for my future. What if someone learns I am—a witch?”

Pippa strode over to her, laying a hand on Joy’s arm in comfort. Joy shivered—Pippa could not know the effect she had on her. “I will protect you, even if I spend my last breath doing so.” 

Joy felt herself unravel at this statement—she did not wish for Pippa to put herself in danger for her sake. “I am certain there is many an important person in this world more worthy of that sacrifice.”

“But none of them is you,” Pippa whispered. 

Her words struck Joy’s very heart—but Pippa could not mean them in the way that Joy longed for. “Yet I am no one,” Joy said, turning from her.

“You are not no one to me.” Pippa’s hand, entreating, trailed over the dense woven plait falling over her shoulders. “Let me show you how much you mean to me. Would you— do me the honour of letting me brush your hair?”

Joy looked over her shoulder back at the knight and hesitated, wondering at the curious request—but supposed that for someone with such short hair, long hair must be a source of some fascination, and an act of service seemed fitting for a knight to prove her faithfulness. She remembered the harsh way that Mother Broomhead would brush her hair for her when she was young—and swept out of Pippa’s hand back to the bed. For a moment Joy thought she would refuse, for the memory of Mother Broomhead pulling on the comb sharply such that it hurt her scalp was too much. She had quickly learnt how to handle the length of her hair to spare herself the torture. Pippa followed her in her eagerness to please, and gazed up into her eyes. Despite Joy’s grievances, she retrieved her square comb from the table by her bed, her thumb rubbing the carvings upon it for a moment, before she entrusted it into Pippa’s hands. “Very well.”

Joy started to try to find the end of her plait to undo the leather tie, but Pippa stopped her hand with her own. “Allow me.”

Joy nodded her consent, and watched with a beating heart as Pippa picked up the coil of her hair from the floor. Once her hair was free, it was always much harder to put it back into order—so when Pippa undid the tie and began to deftly unravel the dense plait, Joy settled in for an inevitable stretch of time where she had no choice but to be patient, until she was sure that Pippa would tire of the chore. The hair, where it had been woven tightly, was set in deep undulations that curled it like a stormy ocean, spreading out and occupying the available space around them.

Pippa hung the hair that had been combed out over the high edges of the cabinets and wardrobe and shelves in long, drooping streamers, while she worked her way up towards Joy herself. Joy remained sat on the bed, hands upon her knees while she waited passively. Pippa was slower at brushing her hair than she, but it was quite a different experience having her hair brushed by someone other than herself. Where she would have been practical about it—for indeed, having such great masses of hair, she could not afford to fritter away her time by taking any excess of time over it—Pippa was ever so gentle with her hair, passing it through her hands as if handling a bolt of the most precious silk. 

Morgana, meanwhile, was in her element—her two bright green eyes bounded amidst a dark, thick sea of waves tumbling all over the room that all led their way back to Joy’s head, where her hair parted over her shoulders. Joy smiled to see the kitten so entertained by all her hair, and Pippa fruitlessly attempted to discourage her from attacking the lengths that she was trying to brush through. It was nothing short of a pleasure to see a creature so possessed by the joys of life. Morgana dashed over—under—and between the loops and curtains of hair all draped around, before she wore herself out and settled unhelpfully on the hair next to Joy’s thigh. 

Pippa, upon reaching this part, lifted Morgana with one hand under her little body and placed her in Joy’s lap. She perched on the bed next to Joy—and Joy suddenly realising how close she was, turned her head away. Her ears grew warm as Pippa’s hand stroked Morgana in her lap for a moment, before starting on the hair flowing down her back. 

Joy felt her heart start to race as she realised how close Pippa was—and had the most curious urge to kiss her. She determinedly remained looking away from Pippa—for to see those eyes and lips set in concentration—it would be torture to keep her distance. She ran a finger gently over the kitten’s small head instead, marvelling at how quickly the creature could fall asleep.

Eventually, Pippa’s hand touched the sensitive part of Joy’s neck as she scooped it under, gathering sheaves of hair—until at long last, the comb met her scalp, combing back from her forehead. Joy closed her eyes in pleasure as she was helpless to the relaxing feeling of Pippa’s fingers brushing lightly against her ear, and the resistance her thick hair gave to the comb. Pippa began to brush slower and slower—perhaps she could tell the sensory ecstasy that Joy was in, or perhaps she was enjoying it as much as Joy was.

“Such a beauty must be treasured and treated with the finest care,” Pippa said softly, mere inches from her ear. 

Was there flattery for more than just her hair hidden in that comment? Joy did not know whether she should live in hope for such a thing. “I feared that you would tire of such an arduous task,” Joy confessed in a small voice.

“Never,” responded Pippa boldly. “I would be blessed indeed if I could spend the rest of my days in merely combing your hair for you.”

Joy wondered if she dared put her hand out to link her fingers with Pippa’s—but then, tearing through her dream-like state came the most dreaded sound either of them could imagine. “Joy! Joy! Let down thy long hair!”

Joy whipped up from the bed as if on command, feeling the colour drain from her, and panic striking through her like a lance. She looked at Pippa, who froze in place, expression one of shock. 

“Just a moment, Mother,” Joy called down shakily. “I am in the midst of brushing my hair, and I must braid it.”

The response was barked back up in anger. “Hurry up, child. Your mother is waiting.”

In a way, the predicament they were in was a blessing—for they had a legitimate reason to delay. Morgana mewled—Joy only hoped she would stay quiet while Mother Broomhead was about. Pippa, with a face hardened into a scowl Joy had never seen before, glanced about the room and swiftly gathered all the signs that she had been there together.

“She is early,” Joy whispered, thoughts racing. Her fingers fumbled to loosely braid one side of her hair.

“Where should I hide? In the bottom of the tower by the well?”

“No, she goes down there to fetch water to wash. You must conceal yourself in here so that when she goes down the stair, I can let you down quickly. I am sure there are ways that she can make life difficult for me if she found out that I have had contact with the outside world.”

Pippa took off the pink cotte carefully, and struggled back into her gambeson and mail hauberk, while Joy focused on her hair. It was no short task to re-plait it—and though her fingers were more trained than Pippa’s, it would take time—and they would need all the time they could to plan.

Pippa finally strapped her belt to her, hand resting on the pommel of her sword. Joy wondered if she might see a different side to Pippa today, and shuddered. She could not imagine her drawing that sword in any context other than the play-acting she would do when recounting her tales, but knew she must have done.

“Hide among the bed hangings,” Joy directed her, fighting down her fear. It was an imperfect solution, but the closest thing that they had to a plan. “With any luck, you will be able to stand there unnoticed.”

Pippa bit her lip. “What if she sees me?”

“Maybe the sight of you will scare her off—but I do not want it to come to that. Despite everything, I want no harm to come to her,” Joy uttered bitterly.

Eventually, Joy could delay no longer. She had plaited her hair, and all evidence of Pippa was out of sight—her dirty clothes away in a wash-basket—the cotte Joy had made for her folded neatly and placed under the bed. Joy crossed to the window and reluctantly let her hair fall free, with one last look back at Pippa for strength, before she drew the hangings around her.

Joy drew Mother Broomhead up, fearing that her early return was a sign that she had her suspicions that some betrayal was afoot. Could she know that Joy had cast the tea from the window instead of drinking it? It seemed implausible—but then again, so were levitating pots. 

If she noticed there was something peculiar about Joy, Joy certainly noticed that something seemed different about Mother Broomhead. Beneath her grey cloak, her eyes hungered in a desperate way, and her face was drawn and thin, as if she had not had a meal for days. She looked upon Joy and gave a sniff. Joy knew that Pippa and the kitten were barely hidden, but she restrained herself from furtive glances in that direction, for fear of attracting undue attention to Pippa.

“Mother—I did not expect you for another day,” Joy said in a voice that shook as she spoke.

Mother Broomhead narrowed her eyes in scrutiny. “Not pleased to see your mother, are you? May I not visit my daughter any longer without questioning?”

Joy swallowed. “Of course, Mother. You must be tired—why not wash while I make ready something for you to eat?”

The haggard woman gave a horrible smile that turned Joy’s stomach to see. “I think I will make some tea for you first. You seem under the weather.”

Joy, who had never felt more hale in her life, knew in that moment that she had to make a sacrifice—even though it would undo all the strength and power she had regained. It was the only way that she and Pippa could escape her wrath. “Very well, Mother. The fire is not yet lit, so it may take some time to heat the water.”

Mother Broomhead’s footsteps could be heard descending to the well—and Pippa emerged at once with the kitten cradled in her arms, struck mute by what she had just heard, searching Joy’s face for answers.

Joy seized Pippa’s shoulder. “Go—go now.”

“But she will make you drink it,” Pippa breathed back, anguish etched on her face.

“Better that than she discover that you have been here,” Joy whispered, hot tears in her eyes as she cast her hair out of the window and pressed the ends of her plaits into Pippa’s chest. “Go.”

“I cannot leave you here.”

“Do not argue. Every moment wasted gives us less time. If she should catch us when you have not yet reached the bottom of the tower—” Joy could not bear to finish the thought. She could not let anything happen to Pippa. 

Perhaps Joy’s determined expression persuaded her—for Pippa nodded gravely. “I will come back for you.”

Joy knew she could not confess how that made her feel, even though she so dearly wished to. For if she did—she felt sure that Pippa would never come back. Just like her magic, she would have to allow her affections to be quashed if she ever hoped to leave this place.

Pippa stepped up onto the window sill and began her descent as swiftly as possible, while Joy bit hard on her lip to stop herself from falling apart. In her hood was nestled the small form of Morgana, whom Joy could just make out hiding her face from the sudden light—Morgana, whom she had known for such little time—but how her heart ached to see her slip out of view. Joy tried to lower Pippa as gently as she could, knowing the precious cargo she bore—while trying to preserve Pippa from a lethal fall were Mother Broomhead to discover them both.

Joy gazed down at her handsome knight stealing away into the forest, weeping as she retrieved her plaits—and brought the ends to her lips where Pippa’s hands had been, and kissed them that she might feel closer to her—for she knew somehow that it would be a while before she would see Pippa again—even though she had only just returned.

Mother Broomhead’s footsteps sounded on the steps behind her. “The tea is ready for you now, my child.”

Joy wiped away the tears, and turned back away from the warm daylight, and into the dark room. “Thank you, Mother,” she said, smiling, though her heart was breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all i can say is i'm SORRY
> 
> tune in next Monday for the next chapter
> 
> thank you for all your comments - they mean everything to me. it's been a rough week in terms of my self-confidence in writing, so any offerings you'd like to leave would be super welcome!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After sacrificing her freedom for Pippa's safety, Joy finds herself losing her grasp on important memories. Will Pippa come back for her before she forgets all that has passed between them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for gaslighting, manipulation, and broomhead being The Worst

Joy remembered very little about the days that followed Pippa’s departure. Mother Broomhead stayed both day and night, forcing the tea upon her, pressing cups into her hands, until she was so tired that she could barely lift her body from the bed. 

She had suddenly found herself in the most exhausting of routines, with no breaks, no privacy, and not even the knowledge that the torment was finite—for each hour seemed to drag inexorably onward, though she was barely conscious of what was happening. 

Daylight—the touch of fabric under her hands—the needle resting in a groove in her finger—piercing through the fabric—to candlelight. She saw each day as if through a thick fog, where only flashes of her hands and the surrounding haze could she make out, as if her actions were being told for her and she were merely a puppet.

Not even at nights had she a moment of privacy. Mother Broomhead would crawl into bed beside her, her body overly warm and stifling. Joy would lie there, unable to take a full breath without her chest closing in as the sickly heat reached out its tendrils over her to lull her into a fitful, feverish, restless sleep.

Each day her mother would appear stronger while Joy weakened. Joy’s penitence had come—this was the punishment she had been awaiting for her defiance. It was as though Mother Broomhead _knew_ about Pippa. She made no mention of suspecting anything, but would not leave Joy alone for barely a moment. _“Come into the kitchen, child,”_ she would say, and Joy would be obliged to follow, carried forward by feet she could hardly control. 

Joy desperately wanted to try to communicate something to Pippa, but how could she? She could not read nor write, and the only message they had agreed upon was the cloth that hung from the window to let Pippa know not to call up. She thought of singing, as that was how she had unknowingly brought Pippa to the tower in the first place, but there was never a moment she was beside the window and able to sing out to her—she had no breath for it, for all her strength had to be reserved for the most basic of tasks. In addition, Mother Broomhead had never cared for her singing, and had been quite clear that she should never do so in her presence. It would be difficult to explain it away.

At first, Joy had hung the cloth from the window as a warning to Pippa. She attempted with every ounce of strength that she had to cling onto the memory, for she knew that details were already beginning to slip away—of the importance of the cloth, and that it was a sign for Pippa to be able to tell when Mother Broomhead was there, so she would not reveal herself. Soon, though—like everything—it became less distinct, until Joy could no longer remember what it was that she was meant to remember.

One day, Mother Broomhead spied the cloth and picked it up cautiously. “What is this doing here, I wonder?”

Joy looked at the limp piece of fabric hanging from her mother’s hand, with no trace of emotion sparking in her. Whatever it had been that she was meant to remember about it was gone. “I do not know.”

Her mother took it from the window sill. “Best not to waste fabric,” she said kindly to Joy, and put it back in the basket with her sewing things.

Joy soon found more and more things disappearing from her memory, coming and going in patches. She knew she had to keep the words alive in her mind and tried to do so as she sewed—thus she would form each stitch and try to whisper in her mind all that she had resolved to remember. She thought of Pippa—but why did she come to her bower no longer? There was something else that was important—something about her mother. Little by little, the words began to slip away, and finally all she could think was—Pippa—Pippa—Pippa—as her needle went back and forth. Yet, eventually, her prayer of _Pippa_ became just little intakes of breath—and then nothing more. 

Though the days faded into each other, there came times when Joy felt more lucid, and upon these days she felt the most unsure and full of unrest—it was afternoon, by the way the light had already past the window and that she was beginning to tire at her work. When her mother went down to make her some tea, she felt drawn to the window and stood with her hands upon the cold stone, looking out to the horizon. She hoped she would see something white, or something red—and had the feeling that she was waiting for something. But what was it?

“Come away from the window, child,” her mother chided her. “Nothing out there to see but trees and sky.”

Of course there was nothing out there. There never had been. “Yes, Mother.”

* * *

The next morning—or it could have been many mornings hence, and Joy would be none the wiser—she awoke late, groggy and still exhausted, with a nagging sensation in her mind like there was something she was missing. Yet she could not think on it for long—for over her bed loomed the intimidating figure of her mother, gazing down at her with a strange hunger in her eyes and holding a cup of tea in her hands.

“Drink, my child.”

“No,” Joy groaned, fear gripping her, though she knew not why. “Please, not again.”

Her mother hushed her, and helped her to a sitting position, her hand tenderly on her back. “Obey your mother. Take your medicine.” She raised the cup to Joy’s lips. The liquid moistened them, and Joy found herself compelled to drink. She calmed down at once. Yes, this was how it had always been.

Joy had found herself trying less to remember, for remembering seemed to hurt her the more, and always brought her nothing but distress. There was a name that she was meant to know—she felt it like an itch somewhere inside her head, but whatever it was had gone now. Sometimes upon awakening, like today, she thought she had it, but it was like an upsetting dream. The distress soon passed, when her mother brought the tea. Mother’s medicine would always sort things out.

After she sat with her mother to a morning meal, she settled in for more sewing. Even though her mind was in a permanent haze, and her body felt as though it was weighed down with lead, Joy sewed as Mother Broomhead instructed her. Her thimble practically had become a part of her middle finger, and the skin was tender when she slipped it off to sleep. By now the storage room was filled with clothes she hardly remembered making, though when she washed her hands, she would notice they were sore with pricks from her needle—signs that she had spent much of the day devoted to such a task.

Joy hardly noticed the hours pass, and had to be reminded by her mother to make lunch for them. She made the same stew she had made day after day, not knowing that it was identical to the last, and thereafter she went back to her sewing while her mother watched on.

Their peace, however, was interrupted by something Joy could never have predicted.

“Joy! Joy! Let down thy long hair!”

Joy looked to her mother—she was confused for a moment, since her mother was there within, and yet the voice still called.

“Well?” Her mother said expectantly. “Go ahead. Let them up.”

Joy blinked. Her mother was being surprisingly calm about this, though she could not in memory recall anyone but her mother who knew what to call up to be let in. Eager not to keep her mother waiting, she gathered her bundle of hair all in her arms and let it drop into the emptiness below the window, and looped a length over the hook. She blankly made to pull the speaker up, wondering what had brought them here, and why someone other than her mother knew that she was here, and knew of the words to request entry. What was it that she had forgotten? It did not matter. She had to focus on the task at hand. Her muscles strained with the weight, as she continued unceasingly to lift the person to her window.

Joy half anticipated that her mother would be on the other end, bizarre as that seemed. But no—instead, to her perplexity, a short crop of blonde hair appeared, followed by the fully armoured body of a knight came through the window, in red and gold garb over a mail hauberk, sword in a decorative scabbard at her waist. Who was this fair knight, that she seemed so familiar? She was overwhelmed—helplessly lost in the maze of her own dulled thoughts—for immediately, she felt out of place, as though she had been in a dream, and then walked into another that she hardly recognised. Her hand shot to her heart, which was pounding painfully—why did it beat so?

“My Lady—” the knight began to address Joy, but cut herself off as she spotted her mother, who stood with her hands clasped together and eyes bulging in greedy delight, as the knight’s outstretched hand fell to her side in dismay.

“So this is who has been visiting you,” her mother sneered.

Joy stiffened—for despite the gaps in her memory, she knew in an instant that this knight was someone she knew—somebody whom she felt was part of her, who had given her monotonous life reason—and there was something else just beyond her grasp.

“ _Pippa_.”

Joy did not realise she had given voice to the name aloud until her mother gave an inhuman shriek of laughter. Something had broken through—a small part of something that she _knew_. The one called Pippa locked eyes with her, and gave her a nod, appearing unshaken by the outburst from the old woman.

“I knew that you were defying me, girl,” spat her mother. “You invited the first person who came by up into your sanctum. Worthless girl! How could you be so ungrateful, after everything I have done for you?”

Joy swayed on the spot—everything her mother said had been true, and she knew the words as clearly as if they had come from her own mind, for she was certain she had thought this about herself. Even though she struggled to find sense in her words, they resonated with something inside her, and hearing those words—words that should have meant nothing to her—filled her with an echo of a confirmation of how worthless she truly was.

“You kept her here to control her,” Pippa spoke up, her warm brown eyes dark in the shadowed room. In her armour, she was imposing—and Joy glanced to her mother, to see her reaction. 

Her mother, however, merely pursed her withered lips. “I kept her here so that she could live without fear of hurting those around her with her powers.”

“But you have been _deliberately_ poisoning her with your herbal draughts, hiding the truth from her all her life—”

“ _You_ may see it that way,” her mother muttered. “I have no innate magic of my own—but I knew that _she_ was bound to, what with her birth mother stealing from my herb garden. Herbs taken when one is with child can often transfer magical abilities to the growing offspring. But she never would have used the magic she was undeservedly given to its full potential—not like I would be able to. So I gave her the draught to transfer them to me, but it would only last a few days before it would wear off.” 

Little by little, fragments of Joy’s memories for the past few weeks started to emerge, as if coming to the surface of deep water, as Pippa and her mother shot sharp words at each other. Though she did not know what made her do so at first, she found herself shifting ever closer to Pippa, until she was standing by her side. 

“You never should have taken what was not yours by right,” the knight said, forcing the words from her like a bitter tonic. “If you truly cared for the Joy, you would have trained her—yet instead you stole her gifts for your own gain.”

The fog started to lift, and Joy began to piece everything together—and as the truth emerged, she could finally hear the voice that had been clamouring in her mind, telling her not to drink the draught—but to resist Mother Broomhead—to leave a cloth beside the window to warn Pippa—who meant everything to her—Pippa, who was going to come back for her—Pippa, who _had_ come back for her! 

The words finally burst out of Joy in a rage. “ _You_ were the witch? You were the reason that I was taken from my parents? You lied to me, all this time, without even a moment of guilt?” 

“That is correct, _my child_ ,” she said mockingly. “It was I who told your mother she had been cursed, and then, twelve years later, in disguise I came back and offered to take you away to care for you as my own. You believed anything I told you once your heart was weakened by the draught. All was well for so many years, until you had to go and get yourself found by the first fool who stopped by. And then when you stopped taking the draught, I felt myself weaken. But now—” she waved a hand, and a raging fire sprung to life in the fireplace. “Your powers are mine to wield.”

Joy’s eyes trained on Pippa’s belt, where her dagger was sheathed at the back. She snatched it out in a flash, and held it aloft, pointing it towards Mother Broomhead.

“You are too mild-hearted to use that on me,” the haggard old woman snarled.

Joy scowled, knowing what she said was true—though she burned inside, she could not bring herself to cause deliberate hurt—even to this awful woman who had lied to her for her entire existence. The dagger faltered in the air. Around the hilt, she saw the thimble capped on her middle finger. She was born to create, not destroy—and that she knew to be true.

“Joy—” Pippa murmured, clearly in anguish for her. She took the dagger from her limp hands gently. “Do not take up the weapons of war in anger, for you may well regret what you have to live with in the aftermath.”

Joy nodded to Pippa—she spoke wisely—and she knew that her fit of anger would not have lasted. “Mild-hearted I may be,” Joy said, turning back to Mother Broomhead, her voice dangerously quiet, “but at least I have a heart. Stealing from the poor? These are the actions of one who has no knowledge of love.”

Mother Broomhead’s face pinched. “And I suppose you, in your solitude, know all that there is to know of such things?” Her eyes shifted between Joy and Pippa. “ _Ah_. I see that you think you are in love, because one knight took pity on you and gave you hope for a future, knowing that you would adore her—for you were all too easy to lead down the garden path. You were alone, helpless, and know nothing of the world. Surely you did not think that _her_ intentions were pure?”

Joy blushed violently, and glanced at Pippa, whose face was still marked with righteous wrath, unmoved by Mother Broomhead’s words. The most she could hope was that Pippa merely considered this another one of her lies. 

Pippa’s voice softened again to address Joy. “Joy, you know I would never take advantage of you. I would defend your honour to my grave.”

Well could Joy believe it, for there were any number of times that Pippa could have done so, and did not. Mother Broomhead was trying desperately to push them apart, and to shake the strength she found in Pippa—but it would not work. Even though Joy was ashamed that her feelings for Pippa had been so easily read, Pippa showed no sign of wavering.

“How touching,” Mother Broomhead laughed mirthlessly. Her hand became a crooked claw before her, and the air around her hand shimmered, as though she were holding the very wind. “But there are things even the most virtuous knights of the realm could never defend against.”

Pippa stepped in front of Joy just as Mother Broomhead released the concentrated blast of wind in her direction, and brought the shield up to parry it—and though it struck against the shield and glanced off, Pippa strained to keep her footing.

Mother Broomhead let loose more handfuls of pure force upon Pippa, but she stood strong—her shield absorbed the attacks, braced against her shoulder. In a furied response, the old woman stretched her arms out to the fire, and whirled them about until the flames jumped and leapt to her fingertips. Her hands now conjured a flaming sphere, its crackling energy sparking in her desperate eyes, and threw it at Pippa. She and Joy darted back just in time—but the fire caught the wooden floor and began to scorch the wood at their feet.

Joy reached out in panic, hoping to quell the fire—but her powers, or what were left of them—were too weak. Why had she thought that she would have been helpful? Pippa stamped out the tongues of flame that licked across the floor towards her cloak. “Stay back, Joy!” she cried, holding her arm out to keep Joy behind her.

“You cower behind your shield, just as the girl cowers behind you—too weak to face me alone.”

Joy shook with bitter resentment at this accusation, but she knew that Mother Broomhead was once again trying to manipulate her. Her fist tightened around the thimble on her finger, and she felt it grow warm against her palm. She would not let the old woman’s taunting distract her.

“I have the courage to know when to not strike back. I do not need to turn to aggression to make my words heard,” Pippa declared.

The fire in Mother Broomhead’s hands had been spent, but she had more weapons at her disposal—she flexed her bare hand in the air, and there was a silence when Joy thought nothing had happened—that the spell had failed—but then next to her, Pippa fell to her knees and gripped her throat. Mother Broomhead grinned, apparently strangling her with an unseen magical force.

“Release her!” Joy cried, her voice thin and cracking. To see the power of her magic used so maliciously chilled her to the marrow.

Mother Broomhead let out a coarse laugh, and began to tighten her grip in the air further, her eyes bloodshot and murderous. Seeing Pippa in such a state was horrifying—and so quietly had she been brought low, humbled by the magic now preventing her from taking breath. Mother Broomhead had only been toying with her before—Joy knew that she could have easily snuffed her life out like a candle. No wonder she had been so calm to hear Pippa calling to be let up, nor had she had shown any fear to see Joy in all her armour with a sword sheathed at her side. Such mortal weapons held no power compared to hers.

Out of sheer desperation, Joy cast her hand out to stop her—and as she did so, the thimble upon her finger loosened and flung out towards Mother Broomhead, tumbling through the air. Since she had been focusing on hurting Pippa, she did not see it coming—and it struck her against forehead.

Joy trembled with what she had done—though a thimble on its own was fairly harmless, she had deliberately retaliated against Mother Broomhead such as she had never dared to do before. She turned scowling to Joy, her concentration routed—but then her bulbous eyes fixed on the thimble that hung suspended in the air by her head, prevented from its rebounded course by an unknown magic. 

In a sudden whirl of darkness stretching out from Mother Broomhead’s body, she shrieked out as her image distorted and split such that, to Joy’s horror, she could see around and behind her body to the other side of the room beyond. The thimble sucked all the colours and form from Mother Broomhead into its shining surface, until she had no more physical shape. 

For a moment, Joy thought the world had stopped as the thimble stayed aloft, but then it fell, clattered to the floor, rolled in a circle, and was still. The room was silent, and the shadows calm. Mother Broomhead was no more.

* * *

“Pippa—” Joy yelped, turning at once to where she had fallen to the floor on her knees. “Please— tell me you are all right. You have to be all right.”

Joy felt that everything in her was undoing as she looked upon the crumpled form of Pippa, and grasped her shoulder. Pippa was motionless, and Joy feared the worst—but under her hands Pippa’s body stirred, and she coughed and gasped violently to catch her breath, hair hanging forward. She nursed her throat, which was marked with a ring of red, but managed to look up to meet Joy’s eyes. “What happened?”

“You are safe,” Joy whispered, tears pricking into her eyes as she gazed at Pippa. She was still wheezing—so Joy sat with her, helping her unbuckle her arm from her shield and rubbing her back. Joy was at a loss as to how to make her feel more comfortable, but thankfully Pippa seemed to recover quickly—Pippa was far stronger than she, Joy reminded herself.

“Where is she?”

Joy was startled back into the memory of what she had just done, and looked at the small metal object several feet away. “I think my magic— I think there was enough magic in me to trap her _within_ the thimble. I did not mean to—” She crawled towards the thimble, unable to take her eyes from it, dread filling her as she wondered—had she killed Mother Broomhead, even without meaning to?

“You acted in defence of me,” Pippa said, regaining her faculties and getting shakily to her feet. “You did not know what would happen. And if she is truly sealed within, then I believe she is not— not dead.”

Joy drew her knees up to her chest, folding herself up on the floor. Would she be able to forgive herself? Pippa had spoken earlier of not taking up the weapons of war in anger—but Joy had done nothing but accidentally loose a thimble in her direction. Was she really that dangerous that she could end someone’s human existence by chance? What if she touched Pippa and transformed her into something—a beautiful flower that would wilt, or a sweet apple that would rot? Perhaps Mother Broomhead had been correct—perhaps she really did need to have her powers taken away to protect those around her. Perhaps being in exile was the best thing for someone as destructive as she.

Pippa’s reassuring form came up to her and knelt next to her, where she had made herself as small as possible on the floor. “Think of all those people who she would have hurt that she can no longer hurt now,” she said softly, her voice soothing even when hoarse.

A comforting hand made contact with her back. Joy saw the first tears drop upon her apron, and realised they were her own. “Pippa,” she said, turning her face towards her, “she made me— forget you. She stayed here for days upon end and made me drink and drink the draught until there was barely anything left of me. But you— the sight of you— I could never truly forget you.”

Pippa’s hand cupped her face with her hand, with all the care that she would afford to something precious. “Nor I you, my lady. I am bitterly agrieved that you suffered for my sake. If I had never left— she would not have been able to steal your magic, and would have been much easier to overcome.”

“It is no fault of yours,” Joy said sorrowfully. “It is done, now—and no more.” She stiffened, and flinched away from the thimble, which still lay upon the wooden floor beside her. “What shall we do about—it? I do not know what I did to trap her within it, nor whether I could reverse the magic that put her there.”

Pippa let her hand fall to Joy’s, and squeezed it. “We can take it to one of my wisest friends. She will know what can be done. If she is able to be extracted from it, rest assured that she will be tried and brought to justice, though it is more than she deserves for what she did to you.”

Yet Joy’s mind was in another place entirely—she was still convinced by the idea that she ought to be locked away—for everyone else’s sake. “I think it is a sign—that I should be kept here,” Joy murmured. Though she could feel Pippa’s hand on hers, Joy felt as though she were far away.

Pippa’s hand retracted from her. That was it, then, Joy thought—Pippa would never wish to associate with her like, nor would she ever entertain the thought of continuing this charade of visiting her. Mother Broomhead, who was meant to have been her carer had turned out to be nothing more than a fraud. Why should it follow that anyone else who had been in her life should care about her? She was worthless, and not deserving of such a thing as love.

But quite unexpectedly, Pippa’s hands returned, with a bundle of black fur. Four paws slipped about on the wooden floor as the kitten tried to find her footing.

“Do you remember Morgana?”

Joy was speechless. The tiny kitten—how Pippa had found her and brought her to the tower—it all came back to her. Morgana clambered up onto Joy’s lap, claws piercing into the linen apron as she tugged herself up, and curled up.

“She remembers you,” Pippa said softly. “Did you know that when she was apart from you, she would not stop crying for you? She kept me awake so many nights with the sound. I had to sing back to her to keep her happy.”

The image of Pippa singing to the little black kitten was too much for even Joy’s depressive mood—and she let a smile break her mouth from its morose numbness as she stroked Morgana fondly.

“I think she was drawn to you because of your powers—your magic. She only turned up once you had stopped taking the draught. I am sure she would love to go on adventures with you—” Pippa began, and when she caught Joy’s glance, emphatically continued, “ _outside_. Should she not have the chance to see all the wonders of the world?”

Joy looked down at Morgana as her vision swam with tears. “ _She_ should. I am not sure about whether I should have the same chance.”

“Well, you will have to convince _her_ , not me,” Pippa replied, with a light-hearted shrug, though her eyes were still weary from Mother Broomhead’s attack. Morgana gently snored in her sleep. “She can be very insistent.” Then she paused, falling back into her usual noble sincerity. “It will be all right. I know you are in a lot of pain right now, in here—” Pippa touched her fingertips lightly to Joy’s heart. “But I promise that it will get easier. I will be with you every step of the way.” 

Joy looked between Morgana and Pippa—and then her eyes fell once more upon the thimble, which caught the light tauntingly. “What if I hurt someone else?”

“My friend—the one to whom we will take the thimble—I am sure that she can teach you. Let me make it clear as well, that I hardly expect you to live in the centre of a bustling town. I will find you appropriate lodgings—your own space, to decorate and use as you will, where you do not have to answer to anyone, if you like. Just you and Morgana. Does that sound like a dwelling that would suit you?”

Joy hesitated. The idea of living alone again, even with Morgana, seemed less appealing now that she could remember what it was like to have Pippa’s companionship—yet also, there was the stifling memory of Mother Broomhead spending those consecutive days with her, leaving her with no space nor even a free breath of her own. Her feelings were mingled together. “I suppose I will not know until I try.”

Pippa beamed. “You do not have to decide immediately. For now, let us eat.” She offered her hand to Joy, and Joy gladly took it.

* * *

Pippa made herself more comfortable, taking off her armour, and asked if Joy still had the pink cotte that she had worn when last she was here. Joy remembered at the mention of it that she had hidden it underneath the bed, and marvelled at how it had been lying there undisturbed for all that time—like a bond to Pippa, even when she had all but forgotten her.

Once they had refreshed themselves with some hearty food and a little mead, Pippa spoke of all the practical things that they would need to discuss regarding Joy’s departure from the tower, while Morgana darted about between the shadows.

Pippa advised her of all the items that they might need to take for the journey and on the limit of items that Joy could take with her. She would have to leave some things behind, as least temporarily—like the large loom upon which she did her tablet-weaving. Pippa’s castle was several days’ travel hence, and they would need to consider what was essential to bring, what could be left, and what extra provisions were needed.

Most importantly, perhaps, was that Joy would need a pair of shoes. It was true—those she had were little more than woollen over-stockings to save her from splinters from the floorboards, and were truly were not made to be worn outside. Joy had never paid much attention to shoes before, having no need to walk anywhere that would require them. And if she had had any before she had been taken from her home, her feet had long since grown out of them.

Pippa took a scrap of vellum, some ink, and a slightly bent feather quill, and wrote upon it with a swirling hand what she would need to purchase prior to their departure. At first she had given the list to Joy, but Joy had had to blushingly confess that she could not write. Joy’s task instead was to keep Morgana from singeing her tail and whiskers on the flickering candles about them, and dissuade her from putting her paws onto the inky words and treading black paw prints all over the kitchen table. 

They spent the rest of the day recovering together, each in her own way. Joy, whose hurt left her feeling quiet, let Pippa take the lead—who was much more outgoing in the wake of their victory. Joy was still torn as to whether it was a victory, but did her best to try to listen, lying on the bed while Pippa told her stories. At first, she told new ones, complete with a wealth of dramatised voices—and then, when exhaustion finally took its toll as they both grew more weary, Pippa joined her on the bed and in a quieter tone, recounted some of Joy’s favourites, while her hand played over Joy’s hair, stroking delicately until Joy finally succumbed to sleep.

Pippa awoke her gently after a while so they could have a simple meal of bread and cheese. Joy was absorbed all through the meal, which they ate in amiable silence, by the thought of how different her life would be—how much adjustment she would have to make to cope with a life of such a new pace. She would be able to touch the bark of the trees that had been outside her window her whole life—to walk into the forest under the canopy she had seen Pippa disappear into countless times—she would even meet Pea, Pippa’s palfrey. Yet then her thoughts turned to the thimble—and how she would have to spend the night alone with it once Pippa left. It was next to the fireplace now—still and ominous. Joy imagined Mother Broomhead leaping out of it at any moment, and the thought tormented her.

“I should leave you in peace,” Pippa said once they had been sitting for some time without speaking, making a move towards her armour. “I have stayed upon your hospitality for quite long enough, and you must be itching to have your own space back.”

She watched Pippa for a moment as she prepared to don her gambeson, before blurting out, “I am afraid to be alone with— _her_ tonight.”

Pippa stopped in her surprise, but nodded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “Then I shall stay with you, here—if it pleases you.”

Joy tried not to look overly enthusiastic about the prospect. “Are you certain?”

In the light of the fire, which dominated the room now that night had fallen, leaving the sky outside was a dusky blue, Pippa’s face warmed. “Of course, my lady.”

“I shall take the floor,” Joy said hastily.

“I would not have it.” Pippa shook her head determinedly. “There is room enough for both of us on the bed, if you do not object?”

Joy felt her ears grow hot. The only times she had shared a bed were with Mother Broomhead. This felt different—she was far from opposed to the idea, especially considering how relaxed she had felt earlier when Pippa has been stroking her hair as she slept.

“I have no objection,” Joy responded in a low voice.

Once the fire was doused, Joy self-consciously stripped to her chemise, and Pippa did the same, respectfully turning her back to Joy. Yet when Joy turned once more—she saw Pippa in her chemise, and the sight was exquisite. She had never seen her so undressed—and her form in the unstructured, floating white linen made Joy’s heart flicker like an unsteady flame in a breeze. The large neckline revealed her delicate collarbone, but above it she could see a faint bruising about her throat from Broomhead’s terrible spell. Pippa’s fragility was so unfamiliar, yet so precious that Joy had to avert her eyes. Pippa slipped under the bed linen, a look of calm satisfaction on her face, as Joy brought over the candle, trembling slightly as she joined her.

In the light from the single candle, Joy covertly admired Pippa’s jawline as she rested her head upon the pillow while she tried to make herself comfortable. She envied her short hair—for Pippa did not have lumpy plaits to contend with—Joy usually tried to position them so they were away from her, and let them dangle off the bed to wherever they pleased to fall—but it was not possible from her present position with Pippa there, unless she were to face her. That would not do, though—it would be too intimate in light of the respectful distance they seemed to have mutually agreed upon.

Joy, with her heavy plaits crossing over her body, shuffled herself as close to the edge of the bed as possible, blew out the candle, and closed her eyes tightly. While her mother’s body had felt too intrusively hot and all-engulfing, Pippa’s presence was welcome. Although Joy was desperately worried that she would move in the night and accidentally disturb Pippa, the sound of her soft breathing and the knowledge of her closeness was of great comfort to her. A few moments passed in the darkness as Joy tried to will her worries into sleep—and then she felt another presence upon the bed—tiny points of pressure upon the blankets approaching. At first she was alarmed, but then realised that it could only be Morgana as she felt her whiskers tickling against her ear. The kitten coiled up into her nape, soft and purring against her head—and her worries soon melted away.

Soon it would be the start of a new dawn—and her new life. Joy only wished that she felt more ready to embrace it. Yet perhaps, with her fair knight and her kitten by her side, she would be able to take her first brave steps into the world that had always awaited her at the foot of her tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there,,, there was only one bed asdkjdashkjdas
> 
> not 100% sure if i will have the time to update next monday, since the next two chapters are a lot less written than the previous ones, and i have a halloween zine to put together! sorry :( keep an eye on my twitter @heathtrash for updates on when the next chapter might come out, but hopefully will be back the following monday
> 
> i hope you have enjoyed this chapter!! much angst so please take care of yourself afterwards!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joy wakes up with Pippa in her bed, and prepares to leave behind the confined life she has led for as long as she can remember - though she secretly is longing for something more.

Upon awakening to her dark bedchamber, Joy had a brief moment of panic at the sensation of another presence behind her. The memory of sharing a bed with the horrible Mother Broomhead had been a short, sharp jolt in her stomach—but she calmed when she heard the sound of Pippa’s breathing and remembered how she had suggested that sleeping arrangement the previous evening.

While Joy knew she had not changed position, Pippa, at some point in the night, had turned over into her back—and now her hand rested upon Joy’s waist. Joy gave a quiet gasp as she realised that the feeling of warmth upon her hip bone was Pippa’s little finger. Through the fabric of her loose chemise it was impossibly sensual—and she wanted nothing more than to have those fingers brush softly over her body—but she slipped out instead, washed herself, dressed, and out of pure force of habit, lit the oven in readiness to bake bread. 

Joy realised her mistake at once—for she would not be required to bake several dozen loaves, now that Mother Broomhead would no longer be there to take them. Yet—she supposed that she ought to still bake bread for herself and Pippa to take with them on their journey. She measured out the flour and felt sure that it was not enough, and the much smaller lump of dough felt strange under her hands as she kneaded it, but it would be more than enough for both she and Pippa.

When she went back upstairs, and the dough was tucked in next to the clay oven to rise, Pippa was still sleeping peacefully—and now she could see that Morgana was curled into her stomach, nestled for warmth. Her hair was handsomely ruffled as she lay curled up in the bedsheets, with the light of the dawn rise creeping in through the window, alighting on the golden strands of her hair. 

It was enough light to tablet weave by, so Joy set herself to the rhythm of turning the cards, passing the shuttle through the shed, pushing the twists back firmly. Though she would not be able to take her loom with her, fortunately, tablet weaving could be done without a loom—it only required something to fasten each end onto, to keep the tension and the shed open. Her progress on this would therefore not be in vain, for she would be able to finish it anon—though to imagine the yards of unwoven yarn remaining that she would be next weaving in quite a different home was far more than her mind could bear to imagine.

The dough, when risen and ready to be baked, she formed into loaves and put into the hot oven, covering the opening with the heavy stone slab, before resuming her weaving. The familiarity of her routine would ground her in normality, even though her life was about to change irrevocably. Without her routine, she did not know who she was—and was afraid that in uprooting everything she knew, she would lose her sense of herself completely. 

Pippa eventually stirred, and the distraction of her stretching and yawning and rustling the bed linen roused Joy from her inner turmoil. Morgana followed suit, scampering off the bed in surprise as Pippa swung herself out of bed, looking dreamily at Joy.

“You let me sleep in,” she said, frowning a little.

“You seemed so at rest,” Joy responded. “I did not wish to disturb you.”

Pippa took a deep breath in through her nose. “Something smells good.”

Joy nodded. “The bread is baking.” She stood awkwardly, all too aware that she had been staring at Pippa in her state of undress, and looked pointedly away. “It—is probably time for me to check it.”

Before Joy could turn to leave, Pippa said, “I should definitely get a start on waking up.”

Joy bobbed her head, and descended the steps followed closely by a sleep-dishevelled Pippa, who continued picking her barefooted way down to the well, while Joy carefully removed the cover to the oven and edged the loaves out. They looked crusty and full, so she left them to cool on the side, and extinguished the fire.

When Pippa, shaking water from her hands and face, returned to Joy, she had already prepared a morning meal for them both. “You did not have to go to any trouble on my account.”

“You need your strength for your ride today.” Joy said, passing Pippa a bowl of steaming porridge sweetened with honey. “Since you will be riding out early, you will need something to keep you warm.”

“It does seem cool this morning,” Pippa nodded, warming her hands on the bowl.

Joy joined her at the table by the light of the candle and cooking fire, and hesitantly dipped her spoon into the porridge, glancing up to see if Pippa was enjoying hers. She once again thought on how she had been so fortunate to have gained the attention of so kind a person as Pippa. Joy often felt that she had been granted too many blessings from Pippa, and that her presence in her life was ultimately precarious—handing by a thread—moments away from an untimely ruin. If there was an important lesson she had learnt in her life, it was not that she should trust no one—but that everything had the potential to change between one moment of fate and another.

Once they had both eaten, Pippa readied herself for her journey to the nearest town market, donning her impressive regalia. She allowed Joy to assist her with her mail, for it was difficult to put on by herself—and Joy’s fingers fumbled as she passed the hauberk over her head. Upon seeing Pippa ready to leave, her sword hanging from her belt in its carved wooden scabbard, Joy squeezed her hands tightly around her own hair, wringing out her worries. The last time Pippa had left, she had not seen her for days, and Joy had been left to Mother Broomhead’s mercy. Yet, she could not go with Pippa this time—she would only slow her down, and of course, had none of the right shoes or clothing—and there was also the question of how she would get down from the tower window.

“I will be back by late afternoon,” Pippa vowed, arranging the fall of her cloak over her shoulder. “Hopefully before.”

Joy looked at her as they stood by the window in the dawn light. “I shall pack all that I can before you return.”

Pippa nodded, but then hesitated. “Are you sure you are all right with me not taking—?”

Joy understood what Pippa meant as she flicked her eyes over to the thimble. “I— hope so.”

Pippa looked at her searchingly, frowning. “Perhaps it is better that I keep it with me. It should not be your burden to bear alone.”

At her words, Joy felt something around her heart loosen, and as Pippa took it in her hands and tucked it into a pouch at her waist for safekeeping, she felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. Deep down, Joy knew that if she had been left alone with the thimble, she might have been possessed by some involuntary compulsion to release Mother Broomhead from it once more.

“Keep her safe,” Pippa murmured as she stooped to kiss a confused Morgana on her head.

“I shall do my best,” Joy said, with her heart fluttering in her chest at the sight.

Pippa raised an eyebrow. “I was speaking to Morgana,” she said, all too seriously. 

Joy was too nervous to respond further than to incline her head and give a half-smile. Pippa seemed to understand, for she crossed the distance between them in but a step and embraced her tightly in her arms.

“I will come back, even if the four winds should be against me. I promise you that, Lady Joy.”

Joy sank into the hug, letting herself dream for a moment that Pippa felt for her as she did, but she knew this was only the pitiful hope of one who has been alone for too long.

* * *

With Pippa gone, Joy turned to the recounting of her belongings. Pippa had said that they would not be able to travel heavily laden down, for it would slow their progress. In truth, she had not a great many personal effects—most of her possessions had a practical use, and those that could not be replaced were few.

She set on the floor a large piece of heavy wool to contain everything, onto which she laid the few meagre pieces of clothing that she had—and though it was possibly impractical to wear, in this she also placed the tapestry cloak she had made, in its own protective layer of fabric. Morgana unhelpfully padded across this, and lay in the middle.

“Worry not, little one,” Joy murmured, kneeling next to the kitten and stroking her head. “We could never forget to bring you along with us.”

Joy searched around for other things that she might need. The box of her silk threads—that would be useful—but then her eye fell on the space where her thimble normally would rest. She had only had the one thimble, and it had fit her perfectly—but now, she could never use it again. Ironically, that would have been the one possession she would have wanted to keep, since it fit her finger so perfectly and saw a great deal of daily use.

She descended to the storage levels, finding the wealth of clothing that she had made over the unknown period of time when Mother Broomhead had stayed with her. Shapely kirtles with full, gored skirts and decorative neck trims—long sleeveless surcoats—hose in all colours of wool—fine white linen chemises—and the finest of all, a deep green silk bliaut with side-lacing and lined, gaping sleeves that draped to the floor. Joy was still astounded at the sight of them all—and hoped that she could do what she had always wanted with them, and give them over to those that needed them truly.

A search of the food storage yielded several sacks of fine quality flour, along with other grains that she thought it a shame to waste, but they were too heavy and numerous to bear, and would have to be taken another time. The fresh produce had all been used up, but there were some smoked and salted meats and fish, and honey-preserved fruits in ceramic containers. 

From some spare wool fabric, Joy fashioned a very simple bag that could contain the bread she had made, and some of these preserved foods, and could either be worn over the shoulder or slung over a horse’s back, then packed all she could comfortably carry. There was, fortunately, only a small supply of this left, for Mother Broomhead had not brought any preserved food for a while. 

After she brought all she could upstairs, where Morgana was sleeping in the middle of the clothes, Joy felt a sort of thrill to see all her worldly possessions laid out. There was very little to show for twenty-one years of life, but Joy knew she had no need of anything more. The most valuable thing, after all, could never be possessed. 

The newly made clothes Joy set to one side—for she did not feel they were hers, and rolled them neatly into a pack that she could ask Pippa if they had space for taking. The remainder of her belongings she distributed as evenly as possible into bundles—the volume was mostly in the clothing, to which she had added some extra lengths of thick fabric to function as cloaks or blankets. She apologetically moved Morgana in order to secure the last bundle together, and with that, the floor was cleared, leaving only a pile of lumpy packs. 

The excitement seemed over too fast. Joy turned again to the window, wondering whether all this could be real. Perhaps she would awaken and all that had come to pass with Pippa returning was merely a fevered dream, and Mother Broomhead would leer over her with more of that awful draught. The forest below her undulated in the northern wind, and Joy hoped beyond all that that same northern wind would bring Pippa back to her, as it had done before.

As Joy watched a crow circling close to the tower, she felt tiny paws padding at the fabric of her kirtle—and she saw Morgana there, wide-eyed, standing on one of her plaits, mewling plaintively. Joy picked her up somewhat awkwardly—for she had not yet refined a method for picking up cats—and let her put her two front paws on the window sill, while her eyes grew round with wonder.

“You have seen more of the world than I can remember seeing, little one,” Joy murmured to the kitten. “How can I prepare for what is out there?”

Morgana stared back at her, tilting her head in question. Perhaps it was too much to ask of one kitten. It was certainly too much for herself.

* * *

Morgana, after a few vicious attempts to attack Joy’s tablet weaving, had settled contentedly with a scrap of yarn that Joy had distracted her with, and crawled up her shoulders underneath one of her plaits, the dangling worm of yarn clamped between her claws.

It was many hours before Pippa’s call brought Joy bounding to the window, waking Morgana from where she had curled into Joy’s neck as she slept. The little kitten’s claws bit through her kirtle and chemise at her shoulder, but Joy could hardly feel it—for she could see the red shape of Pippa’s cloak below. She unhooked Morgana from her clothing, not wanting her to risk a tumble out of the window, and cast her hair down for Pippa immediately.

Joy hoisted Pippa up—and though she knew that Mother Broomhead was securely bound within the thimble, some part of her mind was still fixated on the idea that Mother Broomhead would find some way to come back, perhaps even in the guise of Pippa, using her fair face to distract Joy. Thereupon, when Pippa’s face came to view, Joy hesitated a moment in her anxiety—but to look upon Pippa’s face so animatedly lit warmly in the afternoon sun, she not hold back the smile that came to her eyes.

Pippa let down a bundle from her shoulder at once to allow her to bend her knee and kiss Joy’s hand. Joy, thoroughly abashed, could feel her face glowing like a brand as she did so—it had been a while since Pippa had last kissed her hand, and though it was just in her code of courtesy to do so, Joy wished that it was a sign of her affection. 

“It is good to see you,” Pippa said, rising from her knee, her face flushed with her climb.

“As it is to see you,” Joy murmured back.

They both fell under a mutual silence—Joy hovered by the window while Morgana curled about Pippa’s legs in greeting, knowing that she ought to bring refreshments to Pippa after her long day of travel.

As Joy suggested it, Pippa stopped her. “Wait, let me first show you some of the things I found for you.”

Joy agreed, if only because she did not quite know how to say no to her, and watched as Pippa untied the bundle and laid it out on the floor, where Morgana promptly made herself comfortable on a roll of blue wool.

First she presented a linen couvrechef and a woven cloth circlet, to cover her head—Pippa blushed and stumbled over her words to explain that head coverings were worn by married women and those of marriageable age, as unbound and uncovered hair was to be only seen by a husband’s eyes, and would help her to blend in while they were passing travellers on the road or through towns or villages. Joy was not offended, for she knew that it had a practical use—though she was embarrassed that she had had no idea all this time that she had been wearing her hair uncovered like a child, and had unbound her hair in front of Pippa—and that Pippa had also taken it down for her. 

Before Joy could ponder this for any length of time, Pippa showed her the other things she had bought for her—underneath Morgana was a heavy blue winter wool cloak and a circular copper brooch to fasten it, a hood of soft grey, a pair of soft leather boots tied at the side, warm mittens, wooden pattens to slip over her boots, to allow her to walk across less sanitary or damp conditions, and a leather belt with a small knife in a scabbard.

“Thank you for these gifts,” Joy said in astonishment, rubbing her thumb over the shiny ring of the brooch. She did not remember the last time she had new garments that were just for her.

“None of these were difficult to acquire,” Pippa said, smiling at Joy’s reaction. “But there is one more thing.”

She opened the small pouch at her belt and withdrew something, then bade Joy hold out her hand. Into her open palm, Pippa tipped a thimble—not the one she had lost—but bright, shining, and finely tooled. Joy tried it, and it perfectly fit her finger without being too tight as to be uncomfortable or loose enough to slip off. Feeling it there, cupping her fingertip with such familiarity, made her feel strong. If she could overcome Mother Broomhead’s oppressive cruelty with the smallest thing, perhaps hope lay beyond her horizon.

“Thank you,” Joy said, in wonder. “You did not have to do this.”

Pippa let her gaze linger on Joy. “I realised that you were without a thimble. I do not want to offend you by assuming that you would continue sewing—or remind you of something that caused you pain to think on—merely that it will be useful and replace something that you lost.”

Joy shook her head. “It does not offend me at all. It is a lovely gift, and I shall only think of you when I see it.”

Pippa’s lower lip disappeared between her teeth, and she gave a stiff nod.

* * *

The remainder of that late afternoon was spent in Pippa briefly checking over Joy’s packing to ensure nothing had been forgotten—and she marvelled over the dwindling supply of beeswax candles that Joy had not included, that Joy was surprised to learn were rather costly. Together with a bundle of rushlights, they were easily distributed amongst the packs. She had had no idea of their value, since Mother Broomhead had always provided her with them and Joy had never questioned it. There was so much she had to learn.

Since it would be more difficult to do while they were on their journey, Pippa took one last opportunity to brush Joy’s hair in the cleanliness of indoors. Joy suspected that Pippa also took some fascination or relaxation from doing so, since her own hair was so short, and Joy’s abundance of hair offered her much to play with.

“It must be much easier to take care of short hair,” Joy said, closing her eyes as Pippa began combing the hair from her temples. The sound of the comb’s whispering through the strands relaxed her, and she almost forgot about her impending departure from the tower.

“It is. Fortunately for me, it is quite common among those of religious orders to keep short hair.”

Joy swallowed. “I have been wondering—if there was any sense in all of this long hair once I am free of the tower. There would be no reason to keep it, since I doubt I will be in a position again where I should need it for a visitor to climb up to meet me.”

Pippa paused, and Joy could feel her softly hooking her fingers through the dense hair at her nape. “That is quite true. I thought you might prefer to try living somewhere a little closer to the ground. But—is cutting your hair something you want to do?”

Joy bit her lip, gazing around at the yards of hair hanging up about the room, spilling beautifully all around her. “I am not sure.” 

The warm feeling of Pippa’s fingertips touched her cheek. Joy thought it had been in error, until she saw the tender look in Pippa’s eyes as she stroked her face and said softly, “Leaving this place will be a big enough change for you. I think you should wait on this decision, for what my opinion is worth.”

Blushing—telling herself that Pippa was merely being kind—Joy responded, “Your opinion is worth a great deal to me. I think I am merely worried about how it will be while travelling.” 

“You will have me to help you.” Pippa set the comb down, and began dividing Joy’s hair for plaiting. “I regret that last time I brushed your hair we were interrupted.”

 _As do I_ , Joy thought, remembering how intimate it had been, and wondered if Pippa felt the same way.

At Joy’s silence, Pippa continued, “Doing this for you makes me remember what it was like to have long hair.”

“You used to have long hair?” Joy asked Pippa, unable to picture her with anything but her short crop.

“I did,” Pippa said with a sigh. “Though not as long as yours, of course. It earned me some attention—along with the family name—although never attention that I welcomed. I could hardly wait to free myself from it.”

Joy could only imagine what it would have been like to have lived that life—to have been born into a silk-lined comfort that was full of hidden pins to catch on the skin. She had heard some of Pippa’s past, but her reluctance to speak of it was clear in contrast with how exuberantly she would relate her stories of her present, or those of myth and legend. She wanted to ask her more about it—but kept quiet on the matter.

“It grows dark out,” Joy said, looking to the window, where the sun had long since passed by since they had begun. “Let me help you with plaiting.”

Pippa conceded to Joy’s aid in beginning to re-plait her hair. Joy hardly wished to rush Pippa along, for it was soothing to feel her caring hands, but at the rate she was going, they would soon be losing valuable hours of sleep, and they still had yet to eat. Joy’s practised fingers quickly worked down the length of her hair, while Pippa was still much slower—but that meant she stayed close to Joy for longer, sitting with her. As she made to move away, she left Joy’s side with a brief touch to her back, which Joy felt long after Pippa had moved away.

“I believe I have a solution for travelling with your long hair,” Pippa said, as she put the finishing touches to her end of the plait. “Have you a basket?”

Joy nodded towards the basket of woven willow in which she stored her scraps of fabric and thread.

“This should serve well,” Pippa responded. She bent to pick up the trailing plait at her feet. “With your permission?”

Joy nodded shyly, and watched as Pippa began to replace the contents with the coiled length of her hair, until the basket was filled completely.

“Can you carry it?” Pippa asked, offering the basket to her.

Joy took the handle and lifted it easily, and hooked it over her arm. “It is no more heavy than you in all your armour,” Joy said, a nervous half-smile tugging at her mouth.

“That is true,” Pippa laughed.

* * *

After a meal that they both helped to prepare—Pippa almost too close for comfort, brushing hands with her often enough that Joy questioned whether it was accidental—Joy took her place by the window to look out over the dark world beyond. She was beginning to feel trapped within these walls, where everything reminded her of Broomhead. Snatches of her mocking pealed back to her in her mind—particularly what she had said of her and Pippa— _you think you are in love, because one knight took pity on you and gave you hope for a future_. The worst part about it was that it was true.

“One more night,” Pippa’s voice approached as she came up behind Joy to join her. “Leaving now would not be wise, for quite aside from the fact that it is more dangerous to travel by night, I confess that Pea and I would be too tired to ride further.”

Joy nodded, and agreed wholeheartedly that it was a good idea to stay just another night—secretly thinking that it would allow her more time to put off the inevitable. Though she felt trapped, she was also torn—and ugly thoughts that perhaps it would be better for her to remain kept intruding. She admired Pippa’s face in profile discreetly as she looked out over the forest, now grey and colourless in the moonlight. Though Pippa looked excited at the prospect of Joy’s impending freedom, Joy felt that she would never love her—she was only helping her to escape. Pippa had made it her quest to save her, and once that was over, she was sure to forget her.

“You must be aching to go,” Pippa said.

Joy was startled from her thoughts. “I worry that part of me will stay here for a long time after I have left.”

Pippa turned to her, the lightness in her face fading. “I wish that I could take that burden for you. It must be difficult to live with such memories weighing on you alone.”

“I have always been alone,” Joy said. She let a gentle sigh escape her lips—it felt a relief to admit, bitter though the words were. “And I fear I may be destined to be alone in this world.”

The wooden floor creaked as Pippa stepped back from the window. “I think the world may surprise you.”

Joy could not hold Pippa’s words as any comfort. It was no reassurance to hear of the impassive world’s charity—for more than anything, she longed for Pippa to say in as many words that she would not abandon her to solitude when she was safely settled—yet this was no time for empty hope. Pippa turned away, and Joy’s heart twisted to feel her leave. 

“Do you mind sharing a bed again?”

“If it would be more comfortable for you,” Joy returned, cautious in her phrasing. She looked back into the room at Pippa, whose warm golden brown eyes glowed for a moment in the light of the candle she held in its metal dish.

“I hope that I did not disturb you in the night?”

Joy flushed to remember how she had woken up in Pippa’s arms, with Pippa’s fingers tracing her hip bone, and wondered if she ought to tell her. She did not wish to make Pippa uncomfortable—and, on a selfish note, did not want to destroy the possibility of such a thing happening again. “Not at all.”

“Good,” Pippa said with a shy smile, before making towards the steps down with her candle. “It would be best if we get a long rest before tomorrow. I will join you after I have washed.”

Joy was left with her thoughts as the glow of the candle bobbed downstairs—whirling over whether Pippa had asked the question _because_ she knew what had happened in the night—though it seemed unlikely, for Pippa was so respectful of her boundaries. She slipped out of her kirtle as swiftly as possible while she could still hear the faint sounds of Pippa washing below, and slipped into bed, leaving a candle flickering with her unsteady heartbeat on the side. Morgana scurried up the blankets, and Joy allowed her to curl her furry little body up to her chest. She watched the bright flame and let it burn into her vision as she pondered her last night in the tower—her last night knowing who she truly was.

When she heard Pippa’s footsteps, Joy did not move or turn over to see her, and instead shut her eyes tightly—she was as yet unsure whether she wanted to pretend to be asleep already. She felt Pippa climb into bed behind her, and smelled the smoke as she extinguished the candles.

“Joy,” Pippa whispered in the darkness. “Are you still awake?”

“Yes,” she murmured. She knew that she could not convincingly keep up the act of being asleep, especially since a little of Morgana’s fur was tickling her nose and she could not go another moment without brushing it away.

“Are you nervous?”

Joy swallowed. She was terrified—this would be her last night in the tower, if tomorrow she did not awaken to discover it had all been a cruel dream that would melt away in the sunrise. Yet her heart also beat the faster in her worry that over the long night, one of them would move and accidentally make contact. Much as she craved it, she also was worried that Pippa would not want such a thing. “Yes.”

“I imagine it must be daunting for you. But remember that I will be by your side through it all, if that is of any comfort.”

Morgana’s soft fur brushed against her skin at the neckline of her chemise as Joy’s heart lifted. “Thank you.”

* * *

Joy’s eyes edged open—it was the middle of the night still, and not the first time she had awoken. She had had a disturbed sleep, and felt panicked, as though something had unsettled her. Morgana was no longer curled into her chest, and Joy could not see—or indeed, hope to see—the little kitten, since it was so dark.

She rolled over to see Pippa breathing gently on the other side of the bed. Joy edged her hand towards the dim white shape of her chemise until she could feel the linen against her fingertips, and then snatched her hand back. Pippa did not stir. Chancing a bolder approach, Joy brushed her finger over the fabric again, this time not pulling away until she found the soft give of her back. Pippa’s breathing remained steady and slow.

Joy grew in confidence, and shuffled her body closer to Pippa’s, until they were almost touching. She put her palm up to Pippa’s back and found a perfectly shaped dip between her shoulder blades for her hand. She would only linger a moment, just as Pippa had done when she had touched her own back briefly before, but found her eyes closing. Joy knew she ought to move back to her side of the bed, but here, the fabric of the pillow against her cheek felt softer, and Pippa’s body radiated comfort and warmth. Her panicked heart started to calm. She would need only a short time to rest her eyes.

* * *

Joy could have sworn that she had but spent a moment with her eyes shut, but she found herself awaking from a slumber—and as she inhaled her first breath of that day, she realised that her hand that had been touching Pippa’s back was enclosed now in fingers that were not her own—and could see Pippa’s face, serene in sleep, facing her own.

Joy’s stomach lurched. She had fallen asleep facing Pippa, touching her back. Had Pippa also awoken in the night, and had she grasped Joy’s outstretched hand, or had it been an unconscious action in her sleep? All Joy knew was that she had to extract herself ever so carefully so that she would not wake her—but before she could begin to slip her hand out, Pippa’s chest swelled with breath, and her eyelids parted. A smile crept across her face to see Joy looking at her.

“Good morning,” Pippa murmured, her voice low with sleepiness.

“My apologies—” Joy started, and withdrew her hand.

Pippa shook her head. “No, I— Your hand was cold.”

Joy did not know how to respond to that, and was caught off-guard by the way Pippa briskly freed herself from the sheets, got up, and passed that same hand that had just been holding Joy’s through her hair as she went in search of her clothes. Joy lay there for a moment, clutching a fistful of the sheets to her chest as she wondered what had come over Pippa—but shook it from her mind to focus on more practical concerns.

They made preparations for the day ahead—ensuring that everything they needed was gathered in place. Pippa showed Joy the length of rope that she had turned into a harness to bear Joy and her belongings safely down from the tower window. A last meal of porridge was hastily eaten at the table that Joy realised she would never again use, and Joy cleared up after—for they would be leaving for a long time. Downstairs—upstairs—filling waterskins, searching again around each room by candlelight for anything that they might need—losing Morgana—panicking—finding Morgana trying resolutely to become a shadow in a corner—before finally they stood at the window, with all the bundles of Joy’s belongings now piled at their feet. There was nothing left to do to delay the inevitable, and Joy’s nerves were spinning out of control.

“Are you ready?” Pippa asked, looking brightly at Joy.

“As ready as one could be,” she replied in an unsteady voice. 

The morning had gone by in a flurry of excitement, but now there was a mixture of heaviness and lightness to Joy’s heart. On the one hand, the tower had been all that she had known for so many years, and she had much attachment to parts of it that she had not realised—until she had given her last look to each room and knew that she was about leave it forever. On the other hand, the tower had held her for too long—there would be so many sights beyond her window to experience that she would never know if she did not make this final leap away from it. 

For one who had never known change, it was a terrifying prospect—yet one that she knew needed to happen.

Pippa, with a bashful pink to her cheeks, began to gather one of Joy’s plaits from the floor, while Joy realised what she was doing, and collected up the other. They looked at each other with childlike delight as they stood at the window, and cast her hair down, laughing together in mixed relief and companionship as the hair tumbled and jumped as it unravelled in mid-air. 

It was then that Joy realised it would be perhaps the last time she would be able to let her hair down, and amidst the laughter, she felt a wave of regret wash over her. Since Joy had known her, Pippa had turned the act into something that was special for them—and Joy wished that it did not mean so much—but it did. Pippa climbing up her hair into her tower, and then spending days tantalisingly close—she could really not see the same excitement in a cottage. 

“Is everything all right?” Pippa’s voice cut through her thoughts.

“Yes,” Joy answered automatically.

Pippa gave her one of her scrutinising looks, evidently gleaning something quite different than the reply Joy had given. “There are parts of this you may miss. That does not mean that it is not time to move on.”

“You are right,” Joy said with a sigh, realising Pippa must know much more of this sort of thing than she. Pippa, after all, had had to leave behind part of her own life as well. “There is much of the journey still ahead—and we must press onward.”

“Joy,” Pippa said, slipping her hand around Joy’s, and squeezing it gently. “I want you to savour the moment of your freedom. Do not think about what _must_ be done. With this step you will enter a new chapter of your life. There is no rush, nor hurry. This is about you taking control of what should have always been yours.”

Pippa’s hand felt reassuring, even if it did cause Joy’s heart to miss a beat, as it had done that morning when she had woken up. She looked out over the forest canopy in the world that would soon be open to her, not wanting to let go of her connection with Pippa—but took comfort in the fact that Pippa’s words would stay with her. “Very well,” Joy whispered.

Pippa was to descend first. It was Joy’s decision—she wanted to take this action for herself—and knowing Pippa would be down in the new world to receive her would be a great help in making that a possibility. She did not know if she could manage it if she had to wait for Pippa to climb down after her. Pippa stepped up to the window, close enough for Joy touch if she but moved a little, and between them she thought she could feel a thread pulling, drawing her into Pippa’s presence.

“The next time I see your face as close as this, we will be among the green of nature,” Pippa uttered, her voice heavy with intensity.

Joy could feel her lips part as she made to say something—but finding no words that would express all that she wanted, she only nodded. How dearly she wished to confess—and to ask why it was that she had awoken with Pippa’s hands enclosed about her own—but no, this was a very poor time for such a thing.

Pippa turned to mount the window sill one last time, with Joy’s plaits wound around each of her slender hands. Joy caught hold of the slack hair, bracing herself for Pippa’s descent, and after an unspoken agreement between them, Pippa leant out from the window and began her last descent.

Joy fed each yard of hair down slowly, trying to convince herself that this day had finally come. Worries boiled up inside her—that Pippa would leave without her, or that something would happen to her during her climb down and that Joy would be unable to leave on her own—but she tried her best to squash them down as she supported Pippa’s weight, passing hand over hand of her plait over the hook and lowering Pippa further down. She finally felt the tension release as Pippa let go of her hair far below her, and knew that that was the last time anyone would climb down her hair from this tower. It was a bittersweet moment.

Joy was glad that she could delay the moment of her departure a little longer—she gathered her hair back up, feeling the coolness that had seeped into the twists in the braid under her fingers where it had been touched by the air. Soon Joy herself would be free among the breezes about her, and no longer be locked in these stone walls, but there was first the matter of her belongings.

Where her hair had once hung from the hook, Joy now placed the rope with its harness that Pippa had made for the packs to be lowered down, and eventually for Joy to sit in. The length snaked down to where Pippa stood—Joy could not make her out, but could hear her as she shouted up that she was ready—for she would be holding the other end and lowering the bundles.

Joy managed to attach most of her belongings into the harness in the first attempt, tightening and adjusting it to ensure nothing would slip from the knots. While most of the items contained within did not require careful handling, it was a good opportunity to test the rope before Joy herself would finally leave the tower. She pushed the bundle out over the edge, holding her breath as it swayed and turned in the air—imagining herself on it—and marvelled to see it gradually lower on its own rather than by her hand—though she knew of course that Pippa was controlling the other end of the rope.

While Joy waited for Pippa to unburden the harness of its goods, she cast her eyes about her room one last time to see if there was anything she had forgotten. Morgana was restless, chasing her own tail in the middle of the strangely empty floor. Joy had, of course, checked every room countless times by now—but she needed to something to do with herself while she waited or she thought she might burst with anticipation. There was just one pouch left that Joy could carry with her, along with the basket in which she would bundle her hair, and Morgana. Beyond, there was the bed where she had slept for so many years, amidst the quiet bedchamber that already seemed to be missing something. There was still much here that she was not bringing, but they were all things too difficult to take at this time, or items that no longer had use outside of the tower. A tear came to her eye as she thought of all the years she had spent here—but now she could more easily see that those years represented time that had been lost under the control of Mother Broomhead. Out there, with Pippa, she stood a better chance of knowing what true happiness was.

Pippa called up to let Joy know that she was sending the rope back—and Joy caught the harness as it came unweighted up to her. Now was her true test of bravery. With her hair coiled up into the basket, Morgana safely in the midst of it, and the pouch at her waist, she clambered into the harness, making sure it was tight enough about her. Though she knew that she wanted this, and wanted Pippa, more than anything—she was still terrified and unknowing of what would await her on the other side of the window.

Stepping up onto the window sill had never been something that Joy had thought she would do before—and she gave a shiver as she peered down into the bright air below, and the green grass that awaited her.

The rope felt alien in her hands—so used was she to the process of letting her hair be the rope, that a true rope felt coarse under her soft hands that were not more accustomed to handling anything more than harsh than bolts of wool cloth. The texture was new and strange—but less so than the knowledge that she was leaving behind the dark, small tower that had been her only home these past years. 

Holding the rope now, fastened securely around her—she reflected that she had been in this position many a time before to let her mother—or Pippa—down, but never had she been the one to depart. She now faced the uncomfortably real prospect of taking her first trip outside in memory. Joy regretted now that Pippa was down below—not up here with her to help her make that first step into the air—but she knew this was something only she could do herself.

It was now or never, Joy told herself—she checked the hook to make sure the rope was still safely upon it, and then reluctantly let her feet shift under her— the stone gave way to free air. Joy gave a cry—for the distance to the ground had now nothing between it and her—and all that kept her from falling was this single rope she clung to. She tucked the basket closer into her body, gulping, legs dangling beneath her as she sat in the harness. Joy thought for a moment how easy it would be to go back within—to grab hold of the window opening and drag herself back in—but then she felt the rope begin to lower her down.

The world span around her in a whirl of colour—and it was in that moment that she realised that there was a whole sky about her. Though the tower’s impenetrable stone wall was still at her back as she descended, cold air and warm sunlight vied for her attention as they broke over and around her body, and the wide blinding light surrounding her was at once terrifying and wonderful. As the forest canopy began to grow closer, gradually she found her eyes could pick out details she had never before been able to see. While the distance she could see diminished, the reality of the world was coming into relief. Morgana scrabbled out of the piles of hair she had been hiding in to put her paws up on the edge of the basket to look out. Joy was afraid she would fall—but she stayed safely, claws digging into the weave, eyes wide in even more bewilderment than usual.

The grass below grew ever more imminent, and her descent slowed as Pippa took greater care in guiding her lower to the ground. She could see Pippa underneath her—her welcoming face there to receive her—and the tightness in her chest became almost unbearable as she realised she would be touching down upon the earth for the very first time in her memory in only a few moments. The ground was too close—she thought she was going to crush against it—

In her panic, Joy began to shift in the harness, swinging her off-balance as she prepared to meet the grass. All of a sudden, the free weightlessness of her feet gave way to a shifting earth—but then there was a warm sensation around her body as she was enclosed in Pippa’s waiting arms. But then, Pippa toppled over backwards with the pendulous motion that the harness caused—and, in a flailing of limbs, Joy collapsed on top of her. The basket tumbled from her arm, and then the feel of the damp springy grass moistened her palms as found herself staring into Pippa’s face—lips mere inches from her own. Pippa’s eyes were wide in surprise and a blush came to her cheek—and for a moment, Joy imagined herself daring to kiss her while she had her pinned to the ground.

Prudence returned to her like a cold splash of water. She could never kiss Pippa—it would not be right. She scrambled off her, freeing herself from the harness—but even before she could think of apologising, she was stunned into silence by the beauty of the world before her. 

The forest, which had always looked so small to her, was now stretching up into the sky ahead—majestic trees with leaves rich in red and gold. Behind her the former tower loomed, its small dark window at the very top just visible. She tried to picture what it must have looked like when she let her hair down—a serpent of hair trailing down to the ground—but banished the image from her mind. No longer were she and the wind prisoners lured into the tower—now she could feel the wind freely blow about her, and it was exquisite.

Morgana bounded about the grass around her—excitedly nestling in and pouncing at invisible shadows. The earth must have felt a welcome change to her paws—for indeed, the ground that met Joy’s feet, too, was so unlike the dusty wooden floorboards of her tower that she thought she might lose her balance. Each footstep was a new and strange feeling that she treasured—and she could sense the emotion welling up behind her eyes when she realised that the last time she would have touched this grass, she would have been a child.

Joy was spinning around so much—trying to absorb every sensation that overwhelmed her—that she tripped over the lumpy plait of her own hair and fell to the ground, laughing. Grass tickled at her neck and her cheek, and she shifted onto her back to see the sky above—more blue than she had ever seen it, and not a cloud in sight. It was so bright that the tears that had threatened to fall now sprung to her eyes, and she wept to see it.

Morgana jumped onto her chest with a bracing prick of claws through her kirtle and chemise, and investigated Joy’s tearful face.

“Are you all right?” came Pippa’s voice somewhere from above her.

Joy wiped the tears from her eyes, and scratched Morgana behind her overly large ears. “Yes,” was all she could say, as her breathless exhilaration gave into a moment of still relief. “Yes.”

* * *

When she had calmed down and had began to process everything, Pippa led Joy into the forest edge—she gazed up in wonder at the boughs of the trees stretching upwards like arms, ending in leaves of red and gold. Joy was still overwhelmed by all the veins of the leaves, and the gnarls and knots with which each and every branch was covered, but she fought off the tears that still pricked behind her eyes. The fallen leaves rustled underfoot as her feet passed through them, and her boots caught on the occasional hard shape of tree roots that hid beneath the surface. Joy found herself almost tripping—not on the roots, but on the surprise of how she remembered the sensation of walking through the woods, but could not match it with any particular memory.

Joy could not trust herself to know how far they had gone into the forest when—in a gap between the trees, she was astonished to see not only one, but two magnificent horses—the white palfrey, Pea, and a dark bay horse by his side. Joy held back—for she was afraid—even though she knew she was foolish for it. Pippa, noticing her drop behind, turned and held out her hand to her.

“Take my hand,” she said, with a gentle smile.

Joy slipped her hand into Pippa’s, and together they approached where the two horses calmly stood under the dappled light, nibbling on the grass, wool blankets over their bodies for warmth.

With few tender words, Pippa called out to Pea, who approached her enthusiastically. Joy felt something tighten in her chest as the horse nodded his way over, but calmed to see his soft brown eyes under the long eyelashes looking at Pippa—and Pippa, letting go of Joy’s hand, approached Pea and placed a kiss on his long face. She was rewarded with a slobbery tongue to the face, and laughed, patting his head.

The second horse followed on behind Pea, a little more timidly, and thereupon Joy realised that this horse was meant for her to ride—and she stiffened once more in fear. Morgana crashing through the crunchy leaves behind them startled Joy, and she intervened swiftly—she did not wish for the kitten to be trampled under those horses’ hooves—and clutched her to her chest.

“This silly beast is Pea, and our shy friend is Nutmeg,” Pippa said, putting her hand out to Nutmeg, who plodded over before allowing Pippa a few brief pats. “I had to find you a horse, and this one seemed like he was ill at ease in his former stables and in need of a new adventure.”

Morgana struggled in Joy’s arms to try to see Nutmeg. Pippa, noticing the kitten’s curiosity, said, “Bring her closer—see if Nutmeg wants to make friends.”

Still unconvinced by the safety of putting a small kitten closer to a large horse, Joy approached Nutmeg, and held Morgana up to the horse’s huge nostrils in trembling hands. Nutmeg gave a few sniffs of the kitten, before giving her tiny head an enormous lick—with what must now be a very hairy tongue. Joy’s hands were coated in slobber in the process, and she found it a strange, if not unpleasant, sensation. She might have laughed were it not for her reservations, but did manage a nervous smile.

“Wait here—I need to get their saddles.”

Joy felt her hands go rigid with tension at the thought of being left alone with the two horses—for seeing those powerful haunches, she could only imagine the strength behind them and the damage they could do to either herself or Morgana. She jerked her head around behind her to see Pippa walking over to a tree, where a rope was secured by a stake driven into the earth—evidently the saddles were stashed safely up in the branches out of reach of wild animals. She supposed she would have to fend for herself for a little while.

Nutmeg, who seemed shy around humans, kept lowering his head to Morgana and trying to groom her with his lips. Morgana was loving it—she squirmed and rolled over in Joy’s arms, until she wriggled completely free and leapt onto Nutmeg’s neck, scrabbling over his mane before finally sitting triumphant on the blanket on his rich brown back, tucking her paws under her. Joy was petrified—but Morgana seemed content. Nutmeg’s ears swivelled as the leaves rustled behind them, heralding the arrival of Pea, who had followed Pippa for a few paces—now he was ambling back over to Joy and Nutmeg to investigate. His long eyelashes blinked at her, and Joy—keeping one eye on Morgana and Nutmeg in her fear of Morgana tumbling to the forest floor from such a great height and getting kicked about by an unknowing hoof—gave a sort of nod of respect to him. He raised his head to Morgana upon Nutmeg’s back, and Joy stood poised to catch the kitten if she should startle and fall—but she merely rubbed her little head on Pea’s face, which was several times bigger than her, her tiny pointed ear folding against his face as she did so.

Pippa returned, bearing two saddles under each arm and a pack slung over her back. “Good to see you all getting acquainted,” she said, an amused grin tugging at her mouth to see Morgana in pride of place on Nutmeg’s back. 

“I— I do not know how to ride,” Joy stammered, before the situation could get more out of her grasp.

“It looks like Morgana is certainly trying her best,” Pippa replied, with a soft laugh. “But no, I did not expect you to. Would you like to watch me saddle up Pea? Then I can help you to do the same for Nutmeg.”

Joy nodded, and watched with some fascination as Pippa took out a small oat treat for Pea to munch on while she first rearranged the blanket on his back, and then placed the saddle atop it, strapping it securely into place under his belly. When it came to Nutmeg’s tack, Joy had already forgotten most of what Pippa had said—so exhilarated she still was, that she had taken in almost none of what Pippa was saying. She let Nutmeg sniff her, under Pippa’s guidance, and stroked him as he seemed to warm to her. Perhaps Morgana, who was now in the basket with her hair, had eased the development of the bond between them. Pippa helped heavily with the tack, showing her how to smooth the blanket down his back so that his coat would lay flat, and assisting with the heavy, ungainly saddle. 

At Pippa’s suggestion, Joy patted Nutmeg gently to get him accustomed to her—but she thought that Pippa had likely said it to reassure her that he was not dangerous. Nutmeg blinked his soft eyes at her and nosed her shoulder, seeming to warm up to her.

“Would you like to try riding him?”

Joy looked wide-eyed at Pippa, but nodded her consent. Glancing back into Nutmeg’s eyes, felt that she could trust him, especially after he had had Morgana’s seal of approval.

Pippa instructed her how to get into the saddle, which was harder than it had looked whenever Joy had seen Pippa launch herself up with apparent effortlessness. Joy’s first attempt, by comparison, resulted in her knee giving way under her. She felt Pippa’s hands guide her foot into the stirrup in an easier direction, making her shoe rest into the gently curved metal bar. She gave another try, her fingers upon the ridge of Nutmeg’s mane—and Pippa’s hand met her lower back to give her an extra push upwards. With that boost, she managed it—before swinging her leg over the other side of Nutmeg’s body, and rearranging her skirts. The motion had felt curiously natural to her. Perhaps it was because she had seen Pippa mount Pea from her window so many times, and had imagined herself in her position so many times. The saddle, too, felt comfortable beneath her once she had pulled the loose fabric free from under herself.

Joy’s mind, however, was predominantly occupied with how high she was above the ground. While she was used to heights, she had spent most of her life stationary—and Nutmeg was a living creature—breathing, moving, looking about. The world slid around her as Nutmeg’s hooves began to shuffle forwards, but Pippa caught the reins and halted him before he could wander off. She secured the girth strap, tightening it so that Joy would not be in any danger of falling off, and the height of the stirrups. Joy sat motionless, eyes flicking about in worry, but trusting that Pippa knew what she was doing, for she felt like a helpless child.

Pippa lifted the basket of hair at her feet, where Morgana had made herself comfortable amidst the coils of her plaits. She showed Joy how to hold the reins, and let her try to guide Nutmeg onward. To Joy’s surprise, he obediently began to walk forward at her word, and the world lurched again. Her stomach tensed to correct her posture almost subconsciously, and she marvelled at how intuitive the process felt. 

Pippa watched her carefully, giving advice where she could, instructing her on the basics of horse-riding—or at the very least, of staying in the saddle. The cool air bit at her knuckles as she tightened her hold on the leather reins, and she found herself wanting the mittens that Pippa had bought her. They would have to unpack them when they were reunited with her belongings.

“Try going with his movements—relax into his pace.”

Nutmeg’s body shifting under her was strange, but oddly familiar at the same time—and she managed to begin to settle into the pace as Pippa guided them on foot back to the base of the tower. Joy clung on tightly for fear of falling off, though they were going no faster than a walk, but realised this made her bounce against the saddle and tried to relax as much as she could. The branches above her skimmed closer to her head, until they broke the treeline and Pippa led them out into the brilliant light that began to glow once more upon their skin, and brought Nutmeg to a halt. 

At Pippa’s word, Joy shifted an ungainly leg over to the side Pippa was standing. Pippa was holding her hands aloft, waiting to help Joy down. She had not considered how much distance to the ground she would have to descend—of course, nowhere near the distance from the top of the tower, but significant nonetheless—so gratefully took Pippa’s proffered hands to steady her.

When she stepped down, she misjudged the distance, and fell much more heavily into Pippa’s arms than she had intended, for the second time that day. She grasped Pippa’s shoulders—and luckily Pippa kept her footing this time.

“You seem to be making a habit of falling into my arms, Lady Joy,” Pippa said with a playful smile.

“My apologies—”

Pippa shook her head at Joy’s apology. “I consider myself lucky to be the one to catch you whenever you should fall.”

Joy stared at her for a moment in disbelief, before realising that she was still gripping onto Pippa, and that Pippa’s hand was resting on her waist. Blushing, she released Pippa, and turned to walk away, before a slight pull on her scalp told her that her hair was still in the basket by Pippa’s feet—and she could go no further without upsetting it. 

To disguise the abrupt movement, she took the opportunity to stroke Nutmeg’s side. “I hope that my riding was passable,” she murmured.

“You did very well indeed,” Pippa’s voice reassured her, followed by a touch to her arm. “Are you sure you have never ridden before?”

Joy shook her head as Pippa came into view. “I cannot say. There may be many things I did in my childhood and do not recall.”

“I would not be surprised if riding were one of those things.”

At Joy’s request, Pippa withdrew the mittens from the bundle of Joy’s new clothing, along with the new blue winter cloak and hood, for she agreed that Joy would need the extra warmth while riding. A strange look crossed her face as she also took out the couvrechef.

“You should put this on, too,” Pippa said, discomfort in her voice as if she were reluctant to suggest it. She held out the white linen of the couvrechef folded neatly over her hand for Joy.

Joy went to take it, but then paused. “You will have to show me how to wear it.”

Pippa nodded. “Of course, my lady.”

Joy bowed her head and allowed Pippa to tenderly put the couvrechef over her hair. She had not immediately considered how the wearing of a head covering would be something with which Pippa was intimately acquainted, and wondered whether Pippa’s hesitation was a mark of how being an unmarried woman in society had affected her. Pippa adjusted the drape of the fabric about her face and how it fell down her back, before passing the woven band around it and tying it to keep it in place.

“There,” Pippa said, stepping back and biting her lower lip.

“Thank you,” Joy responded. “I suppose an extra layer will be welcome.”

“For better or worse, you will now attract perhaps a little less attention. Though it would be best to keep your basket of hair discreet. It is not usual to see hair of such length, and some may suspect—”

“Witchcraft?” Joy supplied.

Pippa twisted her mouth awkwardly. “Well— yes. And being blamed for the spoiling of someone’s crops would be far from ideal.” She glanced over to the small pile of Joy’s belongings. “Now, I should really get to work on these.”

By refashioning the harness, Pippa managed to secure the packs to their horses, and devised a means to attach Joy’s basket so that she would not have to carry it while riding, and could easily remove it when she needed to dismount. Joy fastened her cloak about her with the circular copper brooch, and passed her head through the opening of her hood, letting the cowl provide another layer to keep her shoulders and neck warm. Beyond bundling up in her tower for warmth, she had never had to clothe herself for any sort of journey. The new garments made her feel excited, and a new eagerness to travel onward began to bubble inside her.

While Pippa worked, Joy wandered about the tower, the basket swinging from her hand, looking at its smooth stone surface—around to the side opposite where the window faced. It was strange to her to be able to see the outer wall that had been on the other side of her entire existence for so many years. 

However, something closer to the ground caught her eye—a collection of stones that seemed less smooth than the others, in a rectangle about ten feet up from the ground. Frowning, she tried to understand what it was—until it dawned on her that this must have once been an entrance to the tower, filled in to prevent Joy from leaving. She could not recall ever seeing any such obvious blocked entrance from the inside. Her mind drifted to the possibilities that if she had ever been allowed some leniency—to be able to go outside once in a while—but it would not do to dwell on what could never have been.

Joy managed to gather her thoughts together before she circled back around the tower to Pippa, and called out to her hesitantly.

Something in her voice must have betrayed her turmoil, for Pippa looked up from Pea’s saddle with a frown. “Is something the matter?”

“There is something I need to show you.”

Pippa followed her cautiously, leaving Pea with a pat to his neck—and Joy led her around to the blocked entrance, asking carefully if Pippa had seen it before. She did not want to sound as if she were accusing Pippa of anything.

Pippa shook her head emphatically. “I would have noticed such an entrance during my first investigation of the tower. Perhaps there was some enchantment upon it to disguise it that was broken when Broomhead was defeated.”

The positioning of the doorway was still a mystery to her. “Why do you think it is so far up from the ground?”

“To keep the structure sound,” Pippa began to explain. At Joy’s frown, she launched into an animated description of how such a tall tower would need a stable base to not fall over—around the point where she started to speak of weight distribution, Joy found herself paying more attention to Pippa’s mannerisms and facial expressions as she spoke and gestured with her hands. It was enchanting to see her speak with such knowledge—and Joy nodded along, though she hardly took in a word. 

“But if anyone was to return, this doorway could be unblocked and used to access the tower,” Joy managed to say when Pippa seemed to have spoken her piece.

“Yes, of course,” Pippa responded. “I shall ensure that I send someone back after us to retrieve the remainder of what was left here, and possibly repurpose the tower somehow. The road here is not exactly overrun with brigands, but it would be best that any of the contents you do not wish to keep is brought back to the castle and redistributed fairly rather than fall into the hands of those who might seek profit from it.”

As they walked back in amiable silence in the sunlight to see the two horses grazing peacefully, Joy said, “You know a lot about building structures.”

Pippa smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of her head. “I have read much about castles.”

Joy hoped that one day she too could be a fountain of knowledge about some topic or another. She was ashamed of her ignorance next to Pippa. Over the coming days, she was sure there would be so much that she did not know, and even more that she was unaware that she did not know.

* * *

At long last, forth they rode on their journey, with Pippa riding ahead, holding a loose leading rein attached to Nutmeg in her hand. Joy trained her eye on the familiar star device on Pippa’s shield as they forged a path through the trees, along a seldom-trodden trail through the woods that whispered as the winds rustled through their golden leaves. The horses’ hooves beat a comforting steady rhythm on the path as they pressed onward, and though she longed to be out of reach of the tower, its stark outline against the sky behind them was not oppressive—merely a shadow behind her as she rode through patches of sunlight.

Riding was still a curious feeling—sometimes foreign, yet at other times felt as natural as breathing. Nutmeg was mostly obedient to Joy’s command, following at a steady ambling gait behind Pea, though Joy suspected it had more to do with Pippa’s occasional words of encouragement or the thought of being rewarded with one of the oat treats that Pippa had let her feed to him. 

In the basket of her plaits, hidden underneath the spread of her blue cloak, Morgana slept peacefully, lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of Nutmeg’s body. Joy did not think she could sleep at such a time even if she wanted—the world was all new and overwhelming, and every turn on the path seemed to bring something astonishing to her attention—the song of a bird she had not heard, the flight of an insect, or the texture of moss on bark.

Joy would have preferred to be riding closer to Pippa—to be able to see her face, or speak to her—but it was safer for her to be led until she gained in confidence in directing Nutmeg on her own, lest he should become alarmed and she lose control of him. Amidst a range of unfamiliar tools and weapons Joy had never associated with Pippa, a shining helm hung from Pea’s saddle bags, blank-eyed and grimly staring at Joy from ahead. There was still so much that she did not know about Pippa’s life, and it almost frightened her to think of Pippa’s eyes gazing out of that helm as she faced an unkind foe.

The sky overhead greyed as the wind brought a blanket of cloud, and Joy wondered what it would be like to feel rain upon her skin. Even with her cloak wrapped about her form, she felt the chill penetrate through her as the sun faded from view.

Though Pippa had said that Nutmeg should be a more comfortable horse to ride than most, Joy was astonished by how quickly she tired. The effort of keeping herself sat straight in the saddle, adjusting to her horse’s gait—it was all quite taxing on her body that was not remotely trained for travel, but she did not want to trouble Pippa with her complaints. She had expected that they would push on much further, so was surprised when Pippa called back to say that they were going to take a rest. 

The sound of running water had been audible for a while, but it was only when they rounded into a clearing that Joy could see the shallow bank of a brook that ran with the last rainfall. Pippa brought Pea to a halt near the bank, where she dismounted Pea and helped Joy from Nutmeg’s back onto the carpet of leaves beneath their feet. As Joy swung her leg over to one side of Nutmeg’s back, she could feel an ache in her lower back where she had been holding herself stiffly for too long. Being in the saddle for long periods of time would be something to which she would have to become accustomed. 

The ground felt very solid underfoot after so long sitting in the saddle with her feet only supported by the stirrups. Pippa let go of her hand, and Joy could feel her legs quiver slightly with the effort of keeping her body up. She looked over as Pippa unhooked the basket from Nutmeg’s saddle, where Morgana stirred and wriggled onto her back amidst her bed of Joy’s hair.

“How are you faring, my lady?” Pippa asked her, passing the basket to her so that she could access the food supplies.

“It is harder work than I expected,” Joy confessed, tightening her hands around the basket handle, “but all of the sights and sounds—I could never have imagined—”

As she broke off, her voice choking with emotion, she could feel Pippa calmly gazing at her. “The world is more beautiful to have you there in it, to appreciate it with your purest heart.”

Joy bit her lip, unable to speak further, and followed Pippa to find a dry patch of ground to sit upon. The leaves provided a barrier from the cold earth beneath, but Joy tucked her cloak around her more closely—the grey skies overhead offered scarcely any warmth. Pippa passed her a waterskin, which she drank from eagerly. She had not realised how thirsty she had been.

Morgana tumbled out of the basket beside Joy and stretched out her front paws, giving a shake as she arched her body down. Joy stroked her head, thinking on what Pippa had said and wondering whether she had meant anything by her words. She felt she had very little to offer the world in the way of beauty.

“It looks to rain soon,” Pippa said, looking up at sky between the tree canopy. “We can ride on through it, or try to take whatever shelter the woods can afford. I do not mind the rain, but I know that you must be tired.”

Joy pressed her lips into a determined line. “We should not make any unnecessary delays. I do not wish to hold you back.” She was also concerned about inconveniencing Pippa for longer than she already had. They had not travelled above a walking speed for the distance they had travelled, which worried her.

“We shall see how you feel later,” Pippa returned with a sage smile. “I admire your perseverance, but trust me—you will ride further and longer if you recognise when you need to rest. Since the journey will take us several days, we need to pace ourselves with careful consideration.”

“I suppose you could make the journey much faster were it not for me.”

A frown spread across Pippa’s face. “Perhaps, but I would not enjoy it. Your companionship is most welcome.”

* * *

The five of them continued onward after a light meal. Joy was grateful for the bread, though she dearly wished for something warm to fend off the chill inside her. 

The woods eventually gave way to an open landscape—fields of coarse, low shrubs and wildflowers nestled about crags that ruptured the cover of the earth beneath like scars. Without the canopy of the trees to shield them from the sky, it was much brighter, though still without sun. Her couvrechef, where it lapped over her forehead, provided a slight shade from the cold grey light to which she was so ill-used.

They tracked around the sides of hills, where the paths led along a river that grew stronger as it flowed. The first flecks of rain upon Joy’s face startled her—tiny cold touches to her skin like tiny fingerprints. She closed her eyes briefly so that she could feel the sensation of each droplet like a blessing upon her. More and more fell, until Joy realised that the rain would make her quite cold if she did not put her hood up—she dropped the reins for a moment, and covered her head, careful not to shift the couvrechef. Pippa, who was wearing no hood, merely shook the short wet hair from her face and continued on ahead.

The rain grew heavier, dashing against the cowl of her hood and the cloak. Pippa slowed their pace so that the horses would not slip on the paths that were slowly turning to mud, and took shelter when the path took them by copses of trees. Pippa seemed to be quite keenly attuned to when Joy was starting to tire, and checked frequently, casting her eyes back over her shoulder to make sure that all was well and that she and Nutmeg were safe in the challenging conditions. Joy wondered how much more tiring it must be for Pippa in her gambeson and ring mail hauberk underneath her surcoat, but she never showed sign of weariness.

They had still not yet come across any sign of civilisation, and Joy came to comprehend just how isolated her tower had been. When she looked back the way they had come, she could not longer see its presence looming behind her. Evidently, they had already travelled some distance, and well could she feel it in her muscles. The wool of her cloak and hood naturally kept her quite dry and mostly warm, though the wind had the unfortunate ability to find every opening and penetrate through.

The rain petered out as the clouds were scattered by the wind, leaving only a few dark broken shapes against the pale cerulean sky. The early evening was setting in, and the sun was lowering in the sky, casting their shadows long behind them in a golden light as they climbed up a grassy slope. Ahead of Joy, Pea slowed, and Pippa looked back to Joy, tilting her head to indicate she should join her on the crest of the hill.

“What do you make of it?” Pippa’s voice was a welcome sound after their long day of travel, and Joy realised she had been craving her soft tones ever since she had last spoken.

Joy raised her head to look over the rolling wilds, and felt the familiar overwhelming tears welling up within her. Although she had spent many a year yearning for the horizon, she never had been able to picture herself beyond it—and now she was here. She adjusted the reins in her hands as Nutmeg shuffled his hooves under her.

“It is beautiful,” Joy whispered. She was in the curious position of one who had long given up her dream, only to have that dream realised—she was left overwhelmed, but the jubilance she should have felt was tempered by a tinge of regret. Her eyes drifted back to Pippa. Whether her regret was for the lost years or for the fact that now she was here in the world, she could only think about her unreciprocated feelings for Pippa—she could not say.

“We shall make camp close to here—I know a more sheltered place. The light fades fast at this time of year,” Pippa said in a curiously unreadable voice, and lifted her reins to steer Pea on down the path. 

Joy looked on after Pippa, wondering if she would ever truly know what lay beneath her armoured exterior, as she watched the shield on her back bobbing away.

* * *

Pippa led them down the hill to the edge of a grove, where the ground had shelves of crags jutting out from the ground. A waterlogged pile of ashes over a central circle of stones made Joy wonder if Pippa had used this spot before to make camp.

After Pippa offered her hand to help her down, and Joy nodded an awkward thanks, Joy freed the basket to set Morgana loose over the muddy ground. The kitten was cautious at first of the damp earth beneath her paws, but then began scampering after a fluttering insect, forgetting her hesitation as her hunting instincts took over and her eyes grew to the size of pennies.

Joy began unloading the rest of the bags from Pea and Nutmeg while Pippa wandered off into the grove with a wood axe hefted over her shoulder that she had drawn from Pea’s saddle. Joy tore her eyes away from her retreating back—the flutter of her cloak—the flashing sun on the axe head. She could not indulge those romantic feelings. Although Pippa had made a few comments here and there that confused her—about catching her when she fell, or her beautifying the world—Joy did not know how she was to receive these. Surely they were nothing more than polite flatteries as a counterpoint to lighten the tension caused by Joy’s emotional outbursts.

Horses were much less complicated, Joy decided. After her day of intense exposure to Nutmeg and Pea, Joy by now felt quite comfortable with both of them—and stroked Nutmeg’s back where she had just managed to remove his saddle. She felt herself relax as she held out one of Pippa’s oat treats in each hand for Nutmeg and Pea.

Yet as soon as Pippa emerged from the grove with a bundle of firewood in her arms, axe tucked into her belt, Joy felt all her determination drain from her as she admired the commanding way Pippa carried herself—all was undone. Despite the chill of the air, Joy felt a hot feeling flash through her.

“As dry as I could manage—” Pippa said with a shrug as she laid down her burden next to the circle of stones.

Joy wordlessly sorted the firewood, beginning to separate the smaller sticks for kindling, while Pippa built up a well-structured fire. Pippa crouched to strike the flint and steel, and sparked a fire into life. Joy wondered if with her magic she might be able to ignite a fire, but did not want to risk anything going awry when she was so tired. 

The fire crackled merrily over the kindling, and soon bright tongues of flame hungrily danced over the wood, sending sparks up into the cool early evening air. The wood gradually shifted and dropped as the fire weakened it, and Pippa began to tell her stories of the ancients, and of gods and goddesses that they used to worship. Joy toasted pieces of bread speared on a stick as she listened, as a muddy-pawed Morgana appeared from the long grass, crouched a few yards from them with a limp mouse dangling from her teeth, and began to feast upon her trophy.

As the smell of warming bread filled the air, Joy felt a light upon her face and realised that it was not originating from the fire, but above—to her astonishment, she saw the sky glowing with an amber light. Below the gentle gradient of blue, the sun was surrounded by a golden halo, tinged with red at the horizon. For a moment Joy thought that the flames of their campfire had reached the very heavens—the dull iron grey wisps of the clouds glowed underneath like the embers of the fire, stark against the soft rays from the sun.

“The sunset,” Joy breathed. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Pippa raise her head. “Your first.”

Joy tore her gaze away from the sunset to look upon the fair face of her knight. She could not imagine the right words she could say to Pippa that might convince her of the ardour of her heart. If Pippa should refuse, the remainder of the journey would be miserable. She bit her lip. “I am glad that I am sharing it with you.”

“Though I have seen many a sunset, I know I will remember this one for a long time yet,” Pippa responded.

Joy twisted her fingers together, cursing herself for wishing that Pippa meant those words in the way that she so desperately wanted her to mean them.

The roar of the fire had died down, until only the embers were left flaring with colour against scorched black wood as the fire licked lazily across it, ghostly violet beneath the undulating flames. Joy gazed into the heat until tears came to her eyes—and Morgana, having had her fill of her catch, crept up under Joy’s cloak and snuggled into her belly, where she began purring.

“Joy, this is the beginning of your new life,” Pippa murmured to her.

“It is,” Joy said with a sigh, turning back to the glory of the sky. The cloud pattern had already changed, obscuring the disc of the sun. “Though I know I should now be trying to live up to my name—and be joyful—I do not feel that I will ever be as carefree as my name suggests. Too many times has it been spoken with malice.”

“The purest joy is hard to strive towards—for who can ever know what happiness is?” Pippa shuffled closer to her on the rock where they were perching, and touched a hand to Joy’s arm. “But you do not have to keep the name,” she said softly. “You could change it.”

Joy was too tired to feel shocked by the suggestion, and curled her fingers over Morgana’s back beneath her cloak. Pippa was so close that she could feel her warmth radiating towards her. “What kind of name do you think would suit?”

“Let me think.” Pippa remained silent for a while. She stoked the fire with a stick, sending a spray of sparks up. “A name belonging to the aeons—of myth or legend.”

Joy thought it unlikely that she would ever live up to such a grand name as one that Pippa was imagining. She reddened—overly conscious of herself, knowing that such an integral part of her being—her name—could be cast aside and forgotten. The idea of it, however, was freeing. She could let herself loose from the pain in her past, and hear something new when she was called by name.

“What do you think of Hecate? She is the goddess of magic, witches, crossroads—and it strikes me that you are at a crossroads in your own life. You are parting ways with the old, and you have many forks ahead of you.”

Joy looked up at Pippa, sudden tears clouding her vision. Before Pippa, she had been certain that she would never escape her life in the tower—but now, there were an infinite number of paths available to her. To leave behind the name that her birth parents had given her seemed ungrateful, but she did not know them—and going by a different name did not erase the fact that she was their child. Perhaps, as Pippa was suggesting, it would only serve to show the direction in which she had grown—but she still had her doubts. “It is a good name. But would it not be a great hubris to name myself after a goddess?”

Pippa raised her eyebrows. “My lady, it is high time you ceased this devaluation of yourself,” she said in earnestness. “Look at the fire.”

Joy shifted her eyes back to the fire. A face—crudely picked out in the ever-shifting glowing ribbons of flame—looked back at her, and then dissipated as soon as she had recognised that the image was of herself. Even painted in fire, it had appeared confident and regal in the same way she saw Pippa.

“When you learn to hone your magic, think how powerful you will be. You deserve to feel valued when someone speaks your name, not haunted by the life of solitude you were forced to live.”

The reflection of herself in the fire—had it been herself as she was now, or a glimpse into her future? If indeed it was her future, she looked forward to a day when she could be an equal to Pippa, though she was not sure it would ever come to pass.

Before she could wonder on that thought further, Pippa asked gently, “What do you think?”

Joy gave a fleeting smile as she felt Morgana’s purrs vibrate through her hand. She could think of no better alternative—and to be named by one she adored more than anything in the world was a great honour. Even if she knew her affections could never be returned, she could carry this one part of Pippa with her. “I like it—Hecate.”

Joy raised her head from the fire to take in the red sunset that promised hope for tomorrow—when she would wake up as Hecate and walk away from the burdens of her old name and her old life.

* * *

Exhaustion taking them both at last—the horses had long since laid down next to each other to conserve their warmth—Pippa and Joy prepared for sleep. They set out their bedrolls near the extinguished remains of the fire by the light of the last dying glow from the sky. 

Joy arranged her cloak and blankets about her as best she could as the tepid rays of daylight faded. She let a shiver escape her lips as she attempted to find some form of warmth. Even with Morgana tucked in under her chin, it was a colder night than she had ever felt, and the bedroll did not shield her from the cold ground as did her warm mattress back in the tower. She had hoped that Pippa would not hear her shiver, but the sound of her voice calling over indicated otherwise.

“Are you all right? Are you cold?”

“I am sure I will warm up soon,” Joy said, drawing her hands closer into her chest. She heard a shifting in the dark behind her, and then the sounds of Pippa moving her bedroll up next to hers.

“There is no sense in our both being cold,” Pippa returned in a matter-of-fact tone. “May I lie next to you?”

“If you think it will help.” Joy’s voice faltered slightly. She hoped Pippa would interpret it as being merely part of the cold, and not due to her panic at the thought of lying next to Pippa. They had shared a bed twice now—and Joy had woken up in Pippa’s arms, her hand draped over her hip—but she was not sure if Pippa knew of that. Joy could only be certain that Pippa had deliberately held her hand to warm it that morning, but that seemed as if it belonged to a different era now—left miles behind them.

Joy felt a chill as the blankets lift behind her, and then again as her plaits shifted as Pippa moved them aside—and then finally warmth enveloped her back as Pippa’s body slipped in behind her.

“Is this all right?” Pippa whispered, as she gently rested her arm around Joy’s waist, as if to hold her close to her chest.

“Yes.” Joy breathed the word as if it were a prayer. 

Pippa’s arm grew heavier over her as Joy relaxed into the embrace. She tried to match her breathing to Pippa’s steady rhythm so that she would not betray the way her breath caught in her lungs as her body tingled all over with the pleasure of being held. It seemed so easy—so natural—for Pippa, that Joy wondered if she had done this before with other women.

“Good night,” Joy muttered, hoping that she would manage to drift off to sleep with her thoughts chasing about her head as they were.

“Good night, Hecate,” Pippa replied, drowsiness already in her voice.

At the sound of her name being uttered for the first time, Hecate let herself melt against Pippa as she released the anxiety she held within her chest. For now, this one evening, she would let herself feel as though she were cherished—not because she thought she deserved it, but because she so desperately needed to experience it before Pippa inevitably left her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long! it's also a long update, so hope that makes up for it. please let me know in the comments if you liked it!


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